


tumblr was always garbage

by familiar



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Homeless, Blood, Drug Use, Fisting, Gender Issues, Infidelity, M/M, Mpreg, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Parent Death, Parenthood, Rough Sex, Trans Female Character, jesus i can't believe there's a homeless au tag and that i am using it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 12:29:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17022648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/familiar/pseuds/familiar
Summary: Baby wants eggs. Bitty picks apples. Jack swallows a toothpick. Kent Parson plucks his eyebrows. All that and more in this archive of two and a half years of junk I initially posted to Tumblr.





	1. bottom of the barrel

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly written for [tomato_greens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/) or just to be experimental and amusing. Things here date from summer 2016 to spring 2018, at various points while Year Three was being posted; naturally, there's no consistent relationship to canon across these stories, because canon was being developed along the way.
> 
> I'm aware that this isn't the kind of thing that Tumblr claims they're going to be dumping, but this easily foreseen minor crisis has inspired me to live my ideals and archive everything where We Own The Servers. Also, my OMGCP backlog is a lot shorter than my _South Park_ history, so to avoid burnout I'm doing the easy one first.
> 
> There's a ton here so if you think I need to add a tag or something, let me know.
> 
> I don't know where I'll post flash fic and scraps in the future, but I've got [this DW](https://sekritomg.dreamwidth.org/) and [this PF](https://www.pillowfort.io/sekrit), which will win? Follow and let's find out!!

### THE TALK OF THE TOWN

Dept. of Culinary Affairs - October 23, 2017 Issue

**Bottom of the Barrel  
**

It was early October, and Eric Bittle was fretting about apples. “In Georgia,” he began, as he often does, “your apples come from Ellijay. It’s a little, teeny town and all your best apples come from there.” So, where does Bittle get his apples, now that he lives in Providence? “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Lord, give me strength, I just don’t know.”

Four years ago, Bittle moved from the also-little, teeny town of Madison, Georgia, to attend Samwell University. He was 18. In Massachusetts, he got his apples from a grocery store in town, the “murder Stop & Shop,” artfully named because “someone was murdered there, I think.” He can’t verify that. He can, however, weigh in on the apple situation: “Well, you know, it’s tricky with supermarket apples. Your basic red delicious and yellow delicious, not good for pie. Not good for snacking, either—and when you’re in college you just go to the dining hall and get yourself whatever fruit they have, since they make you get the dining plan and all, even if you live off-campus.” Bittle did, in fact, live off-campus, in the unofficial Samwell Men’s Hockey Team house, which the team called “the Haus.” Why “Haus,” in German? “I don’t know,” Bittle explained, surveying the apples at a Whole Foods Market in Providence, about a block from the Seekonk River. “It was like that when I got there.”

An amateur baker, Bittle has thoughts about fruit that most men would never consider: “It doesn’t matter what you’re baking. You need an apple with complex flavor. A pink lady is good. A gala’s okay. Fuji maybe a little over-tart, but not bad. Granny Smith does in a pinch but not great. Those are your basic complex supermarket apples.” What about at a farmer’s market? “Oh, then you get fancy. Then, all bets are off.” Bittle coasted through most of September using late-summer fruit in his baking. “I put together a nice peach tarte tatin at one point, which was a highlight. Anyone can make a tarte tatin. I make my own pastry dough for that. But you can use the freezer stuff if you want to, lord have mercy.” There were blackberries and raspberries at the markets as late as mid-month. Bittle used those to conjure up a trio of immaculate pies. He posts his recipes on a popular baking blog and addresses his followers’ pastry-related questions on a YouTube channel he’s also used, since high school, to broadcast updates about his own life. All of his social media accounts–including Twitter and Tumblr–share the same handle, _omgcheckplease_.

The last week of September, Bittle went with a college friend, the Boston-based artist Larissa Duan, to an orchard in Natick, Mass. “She said she used to go there in grade school. If someone says they used to do something in grade school—healthy skepticism.” So how were the apples, then? “Oh, don’t ask me—oh lord, don’t put into print that I didn’t approve of the apples at her childhood orchard.” Bittle took a deep breath. “Maybe you can print it if I say something positive. It was a lovely afternoon. We always have the loveliest time, me and Lardo—Larissa. Hockey nickname. We got to climb trees.” Duan was the manager of the Samwell team, for which Bittle was, for four years, a forward. Sometimes he played on the first line, hockey lingo for a starter.

It was on the first line of the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team that Bittle first bonded with his current boyfriend, Jack Zimmermann. Zimmermann is now an elite center for the Providence Falconers, an upstart NHL franchise. “He doesn’t care about apples which way or the other, honestly,” Bittle explained, digging through a pile of overlarge McIntoshes. “He was the team captain and so I think he appreciated that I baked for the boys, that is, when he wasn’t annoyed with me. For his twenty-fourth birthday, though, I made him a maple-sugar-crusted apple pie. True love!” Bittle rolled his eyes. “Actually, nothing is that easy. McIntoshes are good for pie, though.” He grabbed a plastic bag from a nearby roll and began to fill it.

What would become of these apples in particular? “Probably nothing, if I’m being honest,” Bittle said. He was inspecting each with equal intensity, squeezing and sniffing them, tugging at the stems. “Even if I feel guilty about the food waste. Grocery store apples don’t always meet my standards. They’re not from Ellijay, I’ll tell you that much. Or, then again, maybe I can make ’em into apple-bran muffins and pawn ’em off on the Falconers. Hockey players have very low standards when it comes to baking.” Bittle turned the apple he was holding upside-down, to admire the unusual, symmetrically curved cleave on either side of the short stem. “I have very high standards for hockey players, though, if you know what I mean.” He grinned and put the apple into his bag. ♦

 

 

[10.7.16](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/151485568111/the-talk-of-the-town)


	2. smoked meat i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A friend who's long since fled encouraged me to write this after we read quite a number of disappointing headcanons. Definitely did this before I thought Check Please would be, like, a thing for me. I love smoked meat.

Ever since he married “that shiksa,” Bob’s mother won’t talk to him. Jack’s never met his grandmother. He’s never seen a challah cover in his life. He doesn’t pepper his speech with cloying Yiddish phrases, and his parents put up a Christmas tree.

Once, when Jack was 11, his father took him to Bens De Luxe, ordered a plate of smoked meat for them to split, and said, “My _zayde_ —that’s my grandfather, your great-grandfather—on my mother’s side, he used to take me here on Sunday mornings. He didn’t talk much; he’d lost his tongue to cancer. He didn’t eat much; he’d get a chocolate phosphate and a plate of applesauce, and I’d get the smoked meat. I think he was religious back in Jena, before Hitler, but when you go through that kind of thing I think it causes some kind of crisis of faith. So he married a non-nonsense girl from Crown Heights, and they moved up here so he could get back to working for the railroad, which is what he’d done before the war. So they had my mother, and she married your grandpa—he was long-dead when you were born. Also, not Jewish on his own mother’s side. But Mom”—this is the first time Jack’s heard his father say it to mean _his_ mother, not Jack’s—“didn’t care, because it’s the mother’s blood that matters. So that’s why you’ve never met your grandmother. You like the smoked meat? Eat up.”

So Jack did—he loved it, of course: salty, fatty, smoky, rich iron taste, briny finish. “So that’s World War Two?”

“Yeah,” said Bob, “that’s World War Two. It’s stupid, it makes me angry—I wish you knew your Grandmother, Jack. She was a spitfire, you know? But it was her or Mom, and what can you do? You can’t cut yourself off from love. It was hypocritical, too—I didn’t even have a bar mitzvah. Anyway, it’s important to remember this, because, as my mom should have remembered, Hitler didn’t care about that old matrilineal blood thing. You’re my son and you oughta know—some people might not like you because you’re a little different. People live with their differences every day, so sometimes they forget. But other people won’t forget, Jack. There’s a lot of ugliness in this world. Remember when you were a kid and you’d watch my games? When I’d come home sometimes you’d ask me about the fights and you would want to know what those guys would say to me.”

“What were they saying?” Jack asked.

“Well, sometimes horrible things,” Bob answered. “It’s a rough world out there, kiddo. You gotta protect yourself.”

Jack sipped his cherry soda and shut his eyes: this was his dad, his town. Three people in the restaurant had already asked for Bob’s autograph. Jack knew he was different—he talked weird, thought weird, had hockey equipment his classmates could only dream of—but he couldn’t imagine anything anyone could say to his dad to make him hurt the way Jack felt hurt when he heard guys on ESPN laughing over his baby photos. Jack finished the smoked meat, all of it, and reassured himself: he’d get an hour of internet tonight after he finished his homework. He would look up World War Two.

 

[7.1.2016](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/146752154541/i-told-kihv-id-post-my-scraps-so-ever)


	3. starch-heavy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack/Tater, which a) I am starkly against, and b) more people ought to write.

Parse was small—or, not small, perfectly normal-sized, average height for an American boy, muscles cut like the bottom in a locker room roman a clef, one of those trashy stories in one of those trashy compendiums of “best erotic” whatever that Jack used to flip through red-cheeked and nervous if he could steal a moment to sneak into the _Archives gaies_. Bitty _was_ small, on the small end for a man, too small to compete in the NHL. Jack could manhandle him, toss him over a shoulder like a damsel in distress and then toss him on the bed like a 12-year-old boy.

Tater, though—Jack doesn’t want to pick him up, just wants to think about how long his fingers are, how long his arms are; this is a _beast_ of a man, Jack thinks, from a hard place, a real true north that puts Jack’s piddling hometown with its _Archives gaies_ and its sweet, dainty bagels to shame. Tater eats plain gruel-like buckwheat porridge for breakfast, barks laughs, and gives men black eyes through their visors. Jack’s never gotten off on blood before, and certainly not his own, but he can’t help if the sight of it on his own palms is what gets him over the edge.

“You liking that?” Tater asks. He barks at Jack to answer him, but how can Jack when there’s two-hundred-fifteen pounds of body pressing his lungs to the carpet, pressing his face against it? Jack has always had an urge to make meals out of his linemates; it did not in all honesty occur to him that this goon poised behind him would have been looking at his ass that closely over the ice.

It’s only later, after, with the sores on Jack’s palms having reopened on Tater’s early spring bristle, that Jack gets the question, “B liking his program?”

“I guess so.” It’s not Jack’s fault he’s in the middle of a two-week West Coast stand and Bitty is nine time zones away. He hasn’t gotten any postcards yet. “We’re on a break.”

“That’s sad for you,” Tater says. “If he ask I tell him this conversation happens before we—” He says something in Russian.

“That’s great, yeah. Thanks.” Jack swallows. “Me too.”

Jack’s father urged him to pick up a little Russian if he wanted to join the NHL or play professional hockey at any level. He should have taken it in college, instead of passing out of his foreign language requirement on the merit of being, technically, ESL. He spent those credits on something superfluous, probably: that class about baking or maybe photography. It’s only once he’s thinking that he should have taken freaking Russian that he realizes those very classes were the same ones that ferried him toward falling in love with Bitty, whose steady hands are probably, at this very hour, laminating the delicate folds into a batch of viennoiserie.

Still, it likely wouldn’t have helped him translate whatever Tater says when he plucks one of Jack’s blood-streaked paws from his jaw and kisses it.

“What’s that?” Jack asks.

“Don’t worry, Zimmboni. Keep pretty mouth shut.”

Jack can do that. How’s he gonna skate against Arizona tomorrow with his knees like this? Next time he’ll have to roll up a towel.

 

[8.17.2017](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/164310606946/what-am-i-goddamn-doing)


	4. the little-five zesto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A teenage runaway AU. I like this, I don't care if it's patently insane. I could see myself writing more of it, honestly. ... Actually, the first and last section were never on Tumblr, I did write more of it. This is set in like, 2009-10.

0.

“Blonde isn’t doing you any favors.”

What was cute about the girl was that the wig slipped a little when she looked up, and it revealed her actual hair—dark brown, darker for the contrast, a little greasy, but, so was the wig. She was beautiful, though, like in the way ugly people were sometimes called beautiful by intellectuals who wanted to seem open-minded. That was one of Professor Knight’s signatures: the bizarrest-looking people were beautiful. She’d encouraged her teenage son to grow his hair out, for fuck’s sake.

The sign in her hands looked new: _J’ai trop faim, aidez-moi s’il vous plait_.

“The French probably isn’t, either, if I’m being honest.”

So she turned it around: _VERY HUNGRY_ , in capital letters. Underneath, in elegant cursive: _please help_.

“Happy to help.” Shitty stuck a hand out. “There’s a diner around the corner.”

She didn’t get up.

“Do you want me to get you something? … Or, do you want to come?”

She just blinked.

“To the diner?” Shitty wasn’t sure what to make of the lack of response. “Do you know English?”

For some reason, Shitty’d been expecting a low, rumbling voice. But hers was pitchy, and maybe breathy: “Oui.”

“Where you from?”

She swallowed. “Ca-na-da.”

“Oh, yeah? Whereabouts?” Shitty waited. “Or, you don’t have to tell me.”

“Mon-ree-all.”

“I like your accent,” said Shitty. “Seriously, though, that wig. We can get you a nice, dark wig. It would complement your skin, you know?”

“What about my skin?” she asked.

“Well, it’s very pale. Dark on pale, that’s a nice combination.”

“What would you know about it?”

“I’m just a bro who appreciates a pretty face. Come on, you’re hungry, I’m hungry, I want a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of avgolemono.”

Shitty wasn’t sure if it was the grilled cheese sandwich or the remark about the pretty face, but she got up, and she followed.

~

“So,” he said, before opening the menu. “Canada, eh?”

“Eh?”

“Don’t you say that? Canadians? Eh?”

“I suppose.” She opened the menu, was reading it line-for-line, tracing it with her finger. “You don’t really hear yourself when you talk.”

“I don’t?”

“No one does.” She glanced up, and Shitty fell a bit in love: her eyes were glassy, focused, unsettling. Very blue. Long lashes. Not a friendly look, but Shitty had met two kinds of kids on the street: the unfriendly, and the too-friendly. You could figure out what had happened to whom by which they projected. She had that street-kid smell and ragged lips and fingernails, which she was consciously hiding in the sleeves of her hoodie. But when she turned the page on her menu Shitty saw that they were unkempt—too long, but cracked—and colored with chipped polish.

“I think my mom has nailpolish.” It was abrupt. He wasn’t sure why he’d said it.

“CVS does, too.”

“I’ve never done anyone’s nails but my own, but, I think I could do a better job on yours.”

She shut the menu. “Why are you being nice to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I be nice?” he stuck his hand out. “I’m Shitty.”

“You seem kind enough to me.”

“Nah, bro, that was what the guys on my hockey team called me—Shitty. Before I left Andover. It’s a hockey thing.”

“Hockey,” she repeated.

“Yeah, you know, like, hockey—”

“I know hockey!” It was defensive. When she said it, she dropped the “H”: _ock-ee_. “I never had a ock-ee nickname.”

“Then what’d they call you?” Shitty was beginning to feel stupid for holding his hand out.

“Jack.” She sniffed. “They called me ‘Jack.’ ”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jack.”

She took his hand. “Well,” she said, “I guess we’ll see, eh?”

 

I.

Eric hadn’t begun to fathom just how large Jack was—how tall, how broad—until Jack reared up and bellowed in his face, “This isn’t a game!”

“I wasn’t playing.” Eric tried to straighten up, but he was only five feet.

“Either get with the program or go home!”

And, well, that sure hurt—Jack must have known Eric couldn’t go home, right? Wasn’t that the whole point? What else did Jack think they were doing out here? There wasn’t any home, not really, except this one, here and now.

Also, until Jack yelled, Eric wasn’t sure he knew English. Eric had only ever heard him speak in French before. So that was a revelation.

“What’d you do?” Shitty asked, as they were waiting to steal into the gas station bathroom on Moreland—the Shell, not the Chevron. Less foot traffic at this one. Fewer passersby.

“Nothing,” Eric swore, starting to waggle. He really had to go now. “I gave him a plant, is all.”

“A plant?”

“Yeah, you know, a little plant. A Christmas cactus.”

“A what?”

“Christmas cactus,” said Eric. “They’re pretty when they bloom. My mama used to have one—used to, she probably still does, oh boy, I can’t wait to get into the bathroom—what do you think is taking him so long in there?”

“I bet we don’t want to know,” said Shitty.

“Well, you’re probably right, I suppose—I was thinking I could water the cactus here, or Jack would—you know, if he took it from me—”

“She.”

“—if he took it from me, we could walk over here with it and just get it a little water, nice clean water like from the tap—don’t make that face at me, mister! I’ve been holding it all night.”

“You coulda got me up, you know.”

“Nah,” said Eric. “Nah, and destroy your beauty rest?”

“Nothing pretty about me,” said Shitty, and he grinned to show off his pointy canines. It made him look feral. Eric agreed he didn’t look pretty, though he was sure better-kempt than the rest of them. To that point, when the door flung open and Eric rushed inside, Shitty filed in after and, kindly, took a moment to lock the door. He had his dopp kid until his arm; it was his most prized thing. It looked about a thousand years old, like something from a fairy tale. Shitty put it on the edge of the sink and began removing little cannister, old film containers and pill bottles. Being brazen, sometimes Shitty would sneak into the bathroom of a nice restaurant and fill them with lotion, or soap. Sometimes he’d do it in a Target, just pumping shaving gel into an old film cannister. Why not steal the whole bottle? Eric had asked him once. It was something about that not being right, some code. He had a razor blade and he was shaving with it, carefully skirting his mustache. He was impeccably well-groomed for a bum, Eric thought.

One day maybe I’ll be able to grow a beard and then I’ll be impeccably well-groomed, Eric thought. He was only 14; maybe he’d be tall one day.

Or maybe he’d never find out. Was this temporary? He’d only been in Atlanta for two weeks. Had it only been two weeks? Don’t think about it, he reminded himself. Do your business. Don’t look.

He was still doing his business, his semi-hard cock in hand, when Shitty stuck an old Mortin bottle under his nose. Eric had never gone to high school, but he knew that smell; some of his daddy’s team used to smoke after practice, when they thought Coach had taken Eric home for supper.

“No thank you,” he said, shocked, clumsily stuffing his prick back into his pants, still wet at the tip. He would fret about that all day.

 

II.

Eric was confident that if he has access to his kitchen, he could make Jack feel better. The one time he’d seen Jack smile—really smile—was when Shitty’d brought him a Happy Meal with chicken nuggets and an apple pie for dessert.

“You know,” Eric had said, trying to be all casual-like, “McDonald’s pies aren’t very good.”

Jack had looked up; having shoved most of the thing into his mouth, his cheeks were bulging.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is,” Eric had continued, “I can make an apple pie that’s a lot better.”

Having a mouth full of food hadn’t stopped Jack from trying to say, “Well, what good does that do us? Where do you think you’re gonna bake one?” Of course, with all that pie in his mouth, not to mention the weird accent, Eric hadn’t managed to make out what Jack had said exactly. But, that was the gist of it, Eric was certain.

“You don’t have to try to make her like you,” Shitty explained. They were walking down Moreland; Larissa had reported that, on the way into town with her mother, she had noticed that someone had left a big box of stuff on the curb up on Briarcliff. Eric had never been to the other side of Ponce, and he was nervous-excited. “Just rich people over there,” Shitty had explained, “real bougie fucks.” Eric didn’t know what bougies were, but they were going to check it out.

“You think there’s any kitchen stuff in that box?” Eric asked. Waiting to cross Freedom Parkway took an eternity.

“Oh, yeah.” Shitty rubbed his hands together, like he’d realized this was a great idea. “That’d be good, if it’s vintage we could try to sell it at Highland Antiques, get some cash. Or is that one of those antiques malls where you have to rent a booth?” He began to stroke his chin. “I wonder.”

The light changed, and Eric scurried across in Shitty’s wake. “Nah, I mean like, we could hold onto it, use it to cook something.”

“Like over a fire,” Shitty agreed, “real old-timey hobo-like shit. Make some beans.”

“I was just thinking since Jack liked that that awful pie from McDonald’s, maybe he’d like my award-winning apple pie, which is much better.”

Again, at North, they had to stop and wait for traffic.

“You can cook a pie over a fire?”

Eric had begun to notice that Shitty was more difficult to deal with right after he’d smoked some pot, which was just about always.

“You cook a pie in the oven.”

“I doubt there’s gonna be an oven at the end of someone’s driveway,” Shitty said. “When rich people get a new oven, the Best Buy or whatever hauls the old one away.”

“Well,” Eric said, consoling himself. “Maybe there’s a pie plate. I shoulda brought mine. That was pretty darn stupid of me, huh?”

Shitty put a hand to Eric’s back, as if to usher him across North Avenue. “Listen, kiddo. It’s nice of you to want to do something sweet for Jack and all, but you gotta let her live with her choices. Junkies get a little junk-sick sometimes, you know?” As they got to the other side of the street, he paused. After a moment, he added, “Let’s go to the Borders sometime and steal you a copy of _Naked Lunch_.”

“Naked what?” Eric asked. He was only able to half-focus on Shitty’s explanation, too busy hoping beyond hope he’d find something pretty in that box on Moreland to bring home—such as it was home—for Jack.

When they got there, to Eric’s disappointment, the box had already been picked up by the garbagemen.

“Fuckin’ DeKalb County,” Shitty mused. “Fuckin’ yuppie assholes.”

Eric had no clue what he was talking about, none whatsoever.

 

III.

Borders didn’t have a copy of _Naked Lunch_ , or anything else by the author. “Fuckin’ capitalism,” Shitty complained. “This whole place is full of garbage, not books. Who needs any of this?” He picked up something on a display of mostly stationery, a plastic deer figurine in pink glitter. Eric thought, well, the store is full of mostly books? He did like that sparkly deer. He wished Shitty would steal it for him, but Shitty had a twisted code about stealing things Eric might actually like. “Come on, we’d better go to Whole Foods, see if there’s free tortilla chip samples.”

But at the door of the Whole Foods, a staff member stacking handbaskets looked at them funny and said, “Excuse me.”

Shitty paid him little heed, just said, “Hey, bro,” entered anyway.

Eric had never been in a Whole Foods before. It was dark, not bright like a Publix. And not for lack of light—there were overhead lights. It was just yellow, washed-out, dingy. It didn’t feel clean like a Publix; it felt less clean than Kroger.

“Oh, good,” Shitty said, dragging Eric by the arm. “Guacamole.”

It wasn’t guacamole, though, it was pineapple salsa.

“Bullshit,” sad Shitty, “total bullshit. But, here, eat this anyway.” He had somehow managed to pile it only about four chips at once. “Beat off the scurvy.”

“You think there’s anything here Jack would like?”

Through a mouth of tortilla chips, Shitty said, “There’s nothing anywhere Jack would like, because Jack only likes two things: narcotics, and feeling sorry for herself.”

Eric wasn’t sure he liked what these chips tasted like; they shimmered under the yellow lights with a glean of oil, like they’d come out of a deep-fryer. Sometimes at UGA games Eric’s father would take him to his buddies’ various tailgates, and some of those guys had deep fryers, and, well, Eric knew what flour tortillas in corn oil tasted like. He preferred Tostitos, with their dry, clean starch—but he realized, now that he was eating, that he’d been hungry all morning, truly hungry. He’d been hungry for so long that he forgot he was hungry until he had some food.

“See, the thing with Jack is,” Shitty started to explain, but the same employee who’d been stacking baskets approached them.

“How’re you boys doing?” he asked.

Shitty had tortilla chip crumbs in his mustache. “Thanks for asking, bro, we’re fine. When does the guac come out?”

Eric wasn’t sure he liked where this was going.

Shitty’s question wasn’t answered.

 

IV.

It was easy to lose track of time, Eric figured, when day after day was the same and you had nowhere to go and nothing to do. It felt wrong when he thought of it: he had things to do, didn’t he? Wasn’t he supposed to be looking for a place to stay? But Eric was no closer to affording an apartment than he had been upon arrival in Atlanta, and some kind of gravity, or lack of inertia, kept him spinning in circles. The highlight of his week became Larissa’s trip into the city on Saturday mornings; she would take a walk in the park with Shitty while her mother did errands. Sometimes, out of pity, Mrs. Larissa’s Mother gave Eric a few dollars.

“Don’t blow it all in one place,” Shitty chided. He was about to head off with Larissa toward Inman Park. What would they do there, and where would they go when the weather got too cold to spend it outside? Eric thought for a few minutes about other places Shitty and Larissa could walk to, but then Eric realized Shitty’s walks in the park were the least of his worries.

When Jack woke up that afternoon he wasn’t in such a bad mood, so Eric felt like it was safe to ask him: “What do we do when it gets cold out?”

Jack blinked his eyes open, slowly at first and then all at once, like the question caught him off-guard. “I don’t know what _you_ ’ll do,” he said, “but I’m staying here.”

“In Atlanta?”

“Right here.”

The thought was so disturbing that Eric wandered down the street until he remembered he had three dollars in his pocket. He was a block down from the Zesto, and found himself walking toward it until he was pressed up against the window, looking in, reading the menu over the counter. A sundae was a bit over three dollars. Feeling determined, Eric began to inspect the sidewalk and then the parking lot, hoping to find anything: a nickel, a dime, a quarter. Anything would help.

A pair of ladies holding hands were walking down McLendon toward the corner, on the other side of the street. Feeling bold, and determined, he jogged toward them.

“Hi, ma’am,” he said. “Ma’ams.” Suddenly, Eric was grateful for how long it took the light to change before a person could get to the other side of Moreland. “How’s your day?”

One of them was wearing aviator sunglasses and a poofy skirt that sat high up on her waist. She was big-chested and had on a patterned V-neck T-shirt. She let go of the other woman’s hand and said, “Okay.”

“I was just wondering—” now Eric felt solidly deranged “—if you would be so kind, do you have a couple cents on you? A sundae at the Zesto is three-twenty-nine, and my friend Larissa only gave me three bucks, so I was hoping—”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence before he got a dollar along with the question, “Aren’t you too young to be panhandling?” But, mercifully, they didn’t wait for Eric to answer.

On one hand, if Eric sauntered back leisurely, the sundae would begin to melt; on the other, if he ran, truly hustled, he might spill it. He tried to split the difference, and spent the walk daydreaming of all the things he’d buy for Jack one day, if he would only afford it: a beautiful old razor like his grandfather had owned; a Kindle, so Jack could read all the books he wanted without having to fret about going to the store; new yellow sneakers, fresh as they were vivid as they were hideous.

“What’s that?” Jack asked warily, when he saw Eric approach with something in hand.

“Just a sundae, from Zesto.” Eric paused. “I thought we could split it?”

“I don’t want to share a spoon.”

“I got two spoons.” Eric squatted, careful not to rest his weight on Jack’s blankets. “You like hot fudge, right?”

Jack only grunted.

“These nice ladies gave me a dollar,” Eric explained, removing the lid from the sundae. “You know, I had to really screw up my courage to ask them, but it wasn’t too hard once I put my mind to it. They seemed real friendly, but they asked what I was doing panhandling, said I was too young to be doing that. I don’t think I’m too young, do you? I think I’m just about the right age for things, I mean, we all gotta learn to put ourselves out there at some point, I guess.” He sighed, digging his spoon into the melting soft serve. “I’m still worried about what to do when it gets real cold out.”

Jack, who had already been eating the ice cream, had white on his lips. He licked them, slowly. “I used to worry about it too,” he said, before helping himself to another spoonful.

“What made you stop?”

Jack swallowed his ice cream. “Heroin.”

Eric had nothing to say to that, so he kept eating, perhaps a little too quickly, given how thoroughly he wanted to savor things. Then again, the sundae was melting, so.

Suddenly, Eric was deeply, depressingly aware of how rare this moment was: Jack was being honest, and he didn’t seem sick, and he didn’t seem angry. Eric was midway through helping himself to another bite of ice cream when he got a bizarre urge not to feed himself but to offer his spoon to Jack instead.

And Jack accepted, which was weirder.

It made something in Eric start to burn, start to fill his chest with—god, some emotion, some strong tug from his throat to the pit of his stomach.

Eric cleared his throat, to get Jack’s attention. “Listen, Jack, can I ask you something?”

Jack looked up. “I guess,” he said. “For the ice cream.”

“Why—” It was hard for Eric to get it out. “Why does Shitty call you ‘she’?”

Their nice moment was over.

“He shouldn’t,” Jack said, drawing his arm up, to shield his face. “Does he? He shouldn’t.”

“Well, I was just wondering—”

“Stop wondering.”

“But—”

Now Eric felt awful stupid.

“Never call me that. She doesn’t exist. You’ll never get to meet her, so don’t ask.” Jack put his face in his hands.

“But who’s ‘she’?”

“She’s nobody, so shutup.”

Eric was good at that—shutting up. He merely put a hand at Jack’s back, felt him trembling. “You want some more ice cream?”

Jack looked up, pushed himself to his feet. The plastic spoon from Zesto clattered to the pavement. “I gotta—” He found something, dug it out of his blankets. “I need the bathroom, don’t follow me.”

It had been months now, so Eric knew Jack needed the bathroom the way his mother needed her alone time: to do something she really ought not to have been doing, that was, behind closed doors. Eric had seen Jack crush pills in his fist and rub them into his gums, that night he’d probably thought Eric was sleeping and couldn’t see it.

In the plastic bowl their sundae was a puddle of white streaked with brown. Eric might have gotten a C+ in eighth-grade English, but he knew symbolism when he saw it.

 

V.

One afternoon Eric returned to the overpass, only to find Jack missing. Shitty had headed to the Murder Kroger to hunt for something, anything in the dumpsters. (“Food stays fresher outdoors in the winter,” he told Eric; Eric couldn’t bring himself to find this very reassuring.)

He’d learned, at last, what happened when it was cold out: you got cold.

Shitty, for all his talk of beans, did not know how to build a fire. “If we collect enough money,” Eric figured, “maybe we can find a room at a motel, or something.” He had begun to slowly give up on the idea of finding a place to stay, or work, or a shelter Jack was willing to patronize.

“Aw, man, a motel?” Shitty had asked. “That’s so bougie. What if we squatted at the Clermont? Johnson told me it was empty. He said you could stay there as long as you wanted.”

“Isn’t that a strip club?” Eric had learned a few things in his time, though he could say he was proud of that.

Jack, for his part, never contributed to these conversations.

“Nah, the strip club’s in the basement,” Shitty explained. “The rest of the building’s an old hotel. It’s supposed to be real rundown.”

“Well, if we’re going somewhere rundown,” Eric had said, “why don’t we just stay here?”

And Shitty said, “Good enough, bro, I guess.”

But now it was raining, and all three of them were miserable. Oh, Shitty tried to act chipper, and Bitty had even stolen him a sample of some mustache wax from the tester station at the Beehive in the Target mall. But Shitty hadn’t used it yet.

“My beauty routine really falls off in the winter,” he’d said, after thanking Bitty and stuffing the wax into his dopp kit. “Make sure you lotion up, Bits.” He’d started calling Eric that, for some reason, after Eric had told him his last name. “It’s had to stay looking fresh when it gets brutal out.”

Eric wasn’t in the mood to stay out in the rain; here he had his nice wool blanket, his nice garbage bags, his nice tarp, and the fleece throw Shitty had picked up for him from city services. He had begun to worry about what would happen to his things if he left them again; would someone take them? His pack was very heavy, and he didn’t want to take it with him and get it all rained on.

It was just, he worried—about Jack, mostly. But also about someone mistaking his nice tarp for garbage and throwing it away.

Apparently Eric dozed off, because the next thing he knew, he was jolted awake. A clap of thunder had done it—the storm was violent. Water was pooling the next intersection over.

Also, Jack had returned, dopey-eyed and grunting. Fully soaked. When he dug through his bundle of blankets Eric caught a glimpse of a dry patch under the arm of his hoodie. Then he pulled the hoodie off, stood, and shook his hair out.

Some droplets fell on Eric’s tarp. “Honey,” he said, not knowing how he’d let _that_ escape his lips. “It’s cold out.”

Jack’s T-shirt was wet; Eric swore he could make out the narrow span of Jack’s body, each ugly thrust of one of his ribs.

“Come here,” Eric said, and he lifted the tarp, and the blankets, and the trash bags. “Don’t be cold. I got you.”

For years following, Eric would wonder: if not for the rain, if not for the drugs…

But, it didn’t matter.

Jack climbed in.

 

[1.5.2018](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/169370191691/fic-post)


	5. cat with a book deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for [@tomatowrites](http://tomatowrites.tumblr.com/), who asked for:
> 
> tell me about Kent Parson failing to top Jack Zimmermann because he’s not dom/masc enough
> 
> bonus epilogue: Kent being furious that Bitty apparently IS masc enough

It’s been a while, but not that long, and Kent has come a long way, but apparently not _that_ far. He’s got his dick in hand, half-erection and already leaking, his fist balled against the inside of Jack’s knee to hold his legs open, and a baseball cap crooked on his head, but no clothes on. It’s as domineering a posture as he can muster, but Jack is looking up with his big, sad eyes narrowed in judgment, and he can’t get hard no matter what Kent says, what he does.

“What’s wrong?” Kent asks, because that’s who he is. “What am I not doing?” He has a Stanley fucking Cup, which he always suspected Jack would find—fuck it, honestly. Jack would probably find that a turn-on, Kent would have guessed, because of that look Jack got in his eyes when they were on the ice together, and because Jack more or less talked about hockey exclusively when they were in bed together. But Jack himself is such a mindfuck, like, he is a person who is _himself_ a walking mindfuck, and Kent doesn’t know if that’s something Jack would actually like, or if Kent’s success would scare him. For a month Kent’s been entertaining fantasies of fingering Jack’s ass with the ring on, but he took it out of his suitcase and left it at his mom’s at the last minute, because what if Jack was threatened by that? God forbid Kent get that thing all fucked up and filthy, anyway.

Being with Jack was always like walking on eggshells.

It’s been a long year, and a difficult one. Vegas is—it’s whatever, honestly, not that Kent doesn’t enjoy feeling appreciated, for once. It’s been fun, playing hockey at that level. Of course, god forbid Kent mention that in any capacity. Jack would go catatonic if, when they won a game, Kent scored a goal and he didn’t. No one else, mind. Just Kent.

Jack opens his mouth, and Kent thinks, okay, well, maybe he’s learned how to vocalize what’s going on in there, after all that therapy. Maybe they really did fix him; maybe drying out last summer did the trick. Maybe they’ll get to have a talk about what this _is_ now, and maybe Kent can go back to Albany tomorrow night without crying his eyes out in his childhood bedroom because he made the horrible decision to go play hockey in Canada three years ago, and all it got him was a Stanley Cup full of lovesickness for an overgrown baby with a mean streak and daddy issues. If Kent wasn’t thinking about _that_ every time some six-one behemoth flattened him against the boards in some Scotiabank Saddledome or Xcel Energy Center or Can You Hear Me Now Arena or The McRib Is Back Stadium, or whatever. See, that’s funny—so much about this is funny, and it’s funny because Kent likes it, and he really thinks Jack would find it funny and like it, too. They used to laugh about that kind of thing all the time, and Kent cannot begin to articulate how many times over the past year he turned to the phantom of Jack Zimmermann sitting beside him and had to stop himself from blurting out some wry observation Kent was entirely sure would have made Jack laugh. The guys on his team, they would _get_ it, but it wouldn’t be the same.

All of this is racing through Kent’s mind, and his hand is getting clammy and he’s getting impatient.

All of that, and Jack finally says, “What happened to your body?”

It takes Kent a moment, but he looks down at himself. He looks up. “I just played three seven-game series,” he says. “You know how it is.”

“Aren’t there trainers?” Jack’s eyes narrow further, like he’s really displeased.

Kent knows this look. He knows it and he hates it.

“Well, yeah, we have trainers.”

“I just figured,” Jack says, slowly, “that in the…well, I guess I figured you wouldn’t—drop weight so much?”

“No,” Kent says, happy to disabuse him of this notion. “It’s worse, actually.”

“But don’t you have really good trainers?”

“Yeah,” Kent confirms. “We do. they’re pretty great.”

“But you’re so.” Jack pauses for a moment so he can think. “Skinny.”

“Okay, well, they’re not magicians, Jack.” Kent takes his hand away from Jack’s thigh, gets off his knees, and sits cross-legged. “They try to help us keep weight on, but we’re playing like, holy shit. It’s a lot, okay. I figured you wouldn’t want to talk about it, but I was eating, like, seven thousands calories a day, at the end there. I never want to see another jar of Nutella in my life.”

That’s a joke, kind of, but Jack apparently can’t tell. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says, and he closes his legs. “I guess I thought after a year you’d be like. Ripped? Or something?”

“I bulked up pretty good earlier in the season,” Kent says, weirded out by how offended he sounds. How hurt, honestly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack agrees. “I saw your shots there in like, Men’s Fitness.” He’s trying to play it off, but he’s blushing a little.

As well he should, because that issue was a special on obliques, and Kent’s are fucking on-point. Or they were, before the playoffs. Will be again, by the end of the summer. He’s got a whole plan and whatever and—

“Were your eyebrows always like that?” Jack asks.

“Yes,” says Kent.

“Did they used to be so like, pointy?”

“Well,” Kent says. He’s not hard anymore, either. “I would _try_ , you know.”

“Try to what?”

“You know, pluck them.” He mimics this, sort of picking at his brow with pincer-fingers. “But I found a place in Vegas that does it.”

“Like a woman’s salon?” Jack asks. “Like my mom goes to?”

“No! Just a salon. Men go to salons, too.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Well, _I do_ ,” Kent says, with emphasis. “And you do, too.”

“Men don’t care what they look like.”

“Yes they do. Are you on crack?” As soon as this is out of Kent’s mouth, he knows it was the wrong thing to say. Jack gets that bug-eyed look, his pupils shrinking. “Jesus,” Kent says, trying to do damage control. “I know you’re not on crack, just, I want to look good, okay? You think you don’t? What was that little haircut you got before the draft?”

“Kenny,” Jack says.

“That gay little undercut? But you grew it back out, I guess, huh?” Something possesses Kent to reach forward, and he grabs some of Jack’s hair and holds it loosely between his fingers. “Why, because you don’t know or care what you look like?” Jack has a blank look on his face, and Kent hates it. He wants to smack it right off, but Jack would like that too much. Instead, he digs down, and comes up with, “Because you’re too busy playing house with a bunch of mites to get that the media is in my fucking face every night and maybe when I see myself on ESPN in the morning I maybe want to like what I look like? Or maybe because you’re too busy hoping I’ll shove my whole fist up your ass—”

Kent had been planning to say something like, “—to worry about what you see in the mirror?” But the first part strikes a nerve, one of many which Jack has exposed and which Kent had spent many years trying _so hard_ not to irritate. Now, it’s nearly two years later, and Kent has done his research; the critical failure, in that instance, had been a lack of knowledge and, more critically, a lack of lube. But Kent will never forget Jack seething, or his curt, “ _You should have done it anyway_.”

Now Jack just shuts his eyes in pain and starts breathing, deeply. Someone probably told him how to do that.

“Zimms?” Kent asks.

From behind, Jack grabs a pillow, and he turns over and buries his face in it.

It’s ironic, but the entire time Kent is putting his clothes back on, all he can see is Jack’s big, naked ass.

~

Kent Parson isn’t an idiot. He’s aware that he’s fighting an uphill battle, in hockey skates: no matter how hard he climbs, he keeps sliding back down that hill.

He has no time for labels. He has no time for anything but hockey, most days. He makes friends on his team, or with other celebrities, mostly because he has no time for dating. And who would he date, if he could? He takes Taylor to the ESPYs and there’s a spread about them in People. He’s asked in a pre-game what he sees in her. “We have the same eyebrows,” he jokes. She takes him to the CMAs. They never go out again, not for any reason necessarily; just the season gets intense, and she’s out with someone else now, and if someone asks Kent in a post-game the next year if her single is about him, well, Kent isn’t honestly sure but so what if it is? and he says as much, and suddenly everyone seems to think he’s a fun dude. He buys a Ferrari, and it’s not until he’s driving it around Henderson late at night that he realizes that Jack’s dad had the same car. Probably still has it.

Guys want nothing to do with Kent. “You’re a mess,” says one dude he finagles into the backseat of his Ferrari. “Weren’t you dating Taylor Swift?”

“So what if I was?” Kent asks, though he of course wasn’t. “You should be so lucky to get her sloppy seconds.”

He gets bored and turns his cat into an Instagram superstar, then his cat is offered a book deal. Kent dreams it’s a picture book and that Purrson, in first person, narrates Kent’s life with Jack in a Las Vegas penthouse like the three of them are a little family. In collage, Kent’s eyebrows are pointy like blades, like they could kill a man. In real life, he starts getting them threaded. He finds fewer and fewer guys who want to fuck around. Then again, he is busy, winning hockey games.

He drops by Jack’s college. It doesn’t go so hot.

He donates a hundred grand to Ke$ha, and he Tweets about it.

He donates a million dollars to GLAAD and another million to a Hillary Clinton Super PAC. She wins Nevada. Kent says nothing about it.

~

“I just love Halloween,” is the first thing Eric Bittle says in his 2019 Halloween special. Kent has an advance copy, because of course he does. He watches it on his iPad on the plane to Tampa. It’s a long flight in the wrong direction and while perhaps Kent should be sleeping, _A Very Bitty Halloween_ keeps him company for the first half of the trip. It’s mid-October, they have a long season ahead of them, it’s just going to get worse from here on out, and Kent can sleep when he’s dead.

It’s cute, the special. Bitty has his mother on, and she laughs about how, growing up in Georgia, her grandmother thought Halloween was the devil’s night, and so she had to go to the church mixer. “Bless her heart,” says Mrs. Bittle, and it rolls off in the same tone Kent’s heard out of Bitty’s mouth himself: ghoulish, to say the least. But he writes it off, because it’s a Halloween special, and all that.

There are other B-listers, and they help Bitty do things like roll bats out of dyed purple fondant while he interviews them about their childhood costumes. The big get is Taylor, and that’s uncanny. She lets Bitty paint little cat whiskers onto her cheeks. They laugh over a pumpkin scone recipe. Kent tries to remember the last album she put out. He hasn’t listened to new music in two years, probably.

Things get weirder when Bitty announces that they’re going to make a non-alcoholic punch. “We’re gonna make it spooky,” he says, pulling out a pair of rubber gloves. “First, stretch it out,” he tells the audience. Kent can hardly believe this is happening; he should have watched tape, and now he is paying for it. But it gets weirder still: “You gotta get your whole fist in there,” Bitty explains. “Now, don’t literally make a fist. Y’all know how to put on a glove. If you make a regular old fist it won’t go in”—he gestures to the camera—“and so you gotta just slide it on in there, like so.”

Of course Bitty isn’t saying it to _him_ , Kent Parson. But there’s a look in his eye, something knowing.

Kent cannot believe he is somewhere over Oklahoma watching Eric Bittle and Taylor Swift laughing their asses off while they make rubber-glove ice cubes, and Bitty blathers about how “you gotta go slowly” and “if you use something to lubricate it things are a little easier—the glove slides right off the final product, see?”

“That’s so clever,” Taylor coos. “I love it.”

“Is that Taylor Swift?”

Kent turns around and sees one of his D-men, a six-feet-five-inch beast named “Tiny,” looming over Kent’s shoulder.

“I guess.” Shaking, Kent slams the iPad back into its case.

“I see she’s making ice hands,” says Tiny.

“She doesn’t need ’em,” Kent says, knowing full-well that it means absolutely nothing.

But Tiny laughs, “Ah-ha!” and slaps Kent on the shoulder, hard, like it’s something he _gets_.

Maybe it’s because he’s a Finn, or because Kent is his captain, or because they’ve both been in this testosterone-fueled shit-show for so long that any joke about a woman and her body parts, no matter how nonsensical, is an automatic cue to act delighted.

Kent laughs, too, so hard that tears come to his eyes.

 

[12.30.2016](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/155152471816)


	6. baby wants eggs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> improbable jack/bitty mpreg, 2k, pg, in which bitty learns you can poach an egg in pretty much any liquid.

It was a long day of deviling eggs for the block party and partly editing a video, and when Bitty’s hit head the pillow at 11 or so he figured he’d be out for a good while. He must have been tired, though, because when he’s jostled out of sleep it feels like he barely slept a wink at all. He tries to hit snooze but the alarm keeps saying, “Bittle. _Bittle_.” Bitty peeks out from under the covers and—oh, it’s only 2, and it’s not his stupid phone, it’s Jack shaking him.

“Sweetpea?” Bitty’s annoyed until he’s worried, finally throwing off the coves. “Jack, what’s wrong?”

Jack lets go, grins like he knows he’s won a game or something. “I can’t sleep,” he explains. “Will you poach me some eggs?” 

Bitty yawns into his hands, tries to think of what to say. On one hand, sure, he wants to. On the other: “Jesus, Jack, it’s 2 in the damn morning.”

But Jack, curse him, has finally learned something. “Baby wants some eggs”—he says it with an even more satisfied look on his face, like he knows he’s _really_ won it now. For emphasis, because Bitty’s a simple man and Jack surely knows how to exploit it, he cups his stomach with both hands—it’s really only possible to tell that Jack is pregnant when his shirt’s off, which it isn’t.

But, Bitty gets the point, and he’s already up now. “Sure,” he says, “I’ll make you some damn eggs.”

“Oh, good.” Jack stops holding his stomach and climbs out of bed.

Bitty must be taking too long, because Jack yanks the covers off of him, and practically lifts him to his feet.

“Jesus!” Bitty yelps, like a shocked little animal. “You’re not supposed to be picking me up!”

“You’re not that heavy. I can bench you.”

“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to lift more than twenty pounds.”

Jack doesn’t reply, because why would he?

The truth is, Bitty is not so totally sure that he really knows _how_ to poach an egg. For that matter, Bitty is not so totally sure what Jack knows what a poached egg is in the first place. Bitty has a strong suspicion that the poached eggs Jack has in mind are really soft-boiled, and Bitty’s real adept at that: six minutes and fifty seconds on a rolling boil, right into an ice-water bath, peel under the tap. He makes those for Jack pretty often, would keep a Glasslock full of them during the season so Jack could eat them after a hard run or a training session. Bitty brines them or soaks them in soy sauce or serves them split open and oozing over baked mushrooms on garlic toast or certain risottos or white asparagus. What he _doesn’t_ do is poach eggs.

So, this is going to be interesting.

Among the things that Bitty wonders, but for which he isn’t going to go back upstairs and get his phone so he can Google it, is whether to add vinegar to the water, whether the egg should be cold or room-temperature, and whether he ought to swirl the water before cracking the egg into it, or whether he ought to swirl the water around the eggs once they’re already in the pot. Should he use a stainless-steel sauté pan, a small nonstick saucier, a stockpot?

He flings open the cabinet, starts looking at the cookware. Not a stockpot, that’s just lunacy. He grabs the sauté pan.

Jack has pulled out the eggs and—maple syrup?

Of all the weird things to crave: “What’s that for? Gonna put syrup on your eggs?”

Jack has no preamble: “Could you poach the eggs in syrup?” Bitty’s barely cocked a brow when Jack starts to explain, “The baby—”

“What baloney,” Bitty says, going back for the saucier. (They certainly don’t have enough syrup to fill the sauté pan, never mind the stockpot.) “Yeah, I’m sure the baby really wants syrup eggs.”

“They have them at the _cabanes_ —the sugar shacks,” Jack explains, sitting at the counter and looking quite satisfied.

“The who?”

“During sugar season. You go to the _cabane_ _à sucre_ , go on a sleigh ride, they serve the best meal, with like sausages, and poached eggs in maple syrup. There’s syrup in everything.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bitty has to decide whether to heat the pan and then put in the syrup, or put in the syrup and then heat the pan. It’s gotta be—he doesn’t want to scald it, so he pours syrup into the saucier first, just enough to cover what he imagines to be a cracked egg. It’s still half the bottle of syrup.  He turns on the burner, and turns off the burner. “I need a candy thermometer,” he announces.

Of course, Jack doesn’t budge. “Sugar season, it’s like February, March, and April. They’d take us with school.”

Bitty’s fastening the thermometer to the side of the pot. “Mmhmm.”

“I haven’t thought about it for years.”

He lights the burner, listens as it clicks to life, puts the flame on low. “I’ve never been there in February, March, and April.”

“I’m playing then,” Jack says, and then he gets quiet—wistful, maybe, Bitty might describe it, were he not forced to look away and watch his thermometer.

Bitty knows he’s impatient, doesn’t go in for candy-making too often; watching sugar cook takes forever, trying to get it, slowly, up to hard-crack so he can make embellishments for cupcakes. Once he made a neighbor’s wedding cake, and that was a doozy—hours and hours and hours of doodling lacy designs on a marble slab. He should have gone with chocolate, it’s more forgiving, and you can just pop it in the microwave, but he thought the tawny color went better with the fresh flowers, and—he just has to keep this syrup at thread stage, is the point.

It’s a lot easier, Bitty’s learned, to keep under a certain level than it is to rise up to one.

“Can you poach three?”

“Baby seems hungry”—Bitty’s shocked that he’s so droll, but it’s 2, and for all the perils of being a househusband, he enjoys reaping the benefit of ten or eleven hours of sleep every night.

Or maybe that itself is a peril, because now he’s over-tired and cracking eggs into syrup.

“ _I’m_ hungry,” Jack clarifies.

“Well,” Bitty jokes, “when aren’t you?” He realizes, a moment too late, that he needs spoons—a wooden spoon to coddle the eggs into soft little sticky packages, and a slotted spoon to lift them from the syrup. This first egg’s already cooking when he gives it a bit of a turn, and he realizes, “Sweetheart, I need a dish.”

So, the first egg comes out not so pretty, a bit haggard, and Bitty would try it but it doesn’t appetize him.

Jack, though, Jack sighs around the first bite. “Bittle,” he says, shiny syrup on his lips. “This is the worst oeuf dans le sirop I’ve ever had.”

“The idea that there’s a good version!” Bitty feels confident now, turns the burner down to bare bones since there’s a little less syrup in the pan, and stirs up a frenzy with his wooden spoon. “Not like it’s stopping you from eating it. When’s the last time you had one, anyway?”

“Must have been twenty years. Of course there’s a good version.”

“And where do you find that?”

“Canada.”

“So you go to the sugar hut—”

“The sugar shack.”

“—and you get some eggs and sausages?”

“First you go on a sleigh ride,” Jack says. “You take a hike through the maple farm. Kids like it.”

In the eye of a whirlpool, the egg twists around itself, tendrils whipping through the loosened syrup. Bitty spoons some warm syrup over the yolk, because maybe that’ll help. “Oh?” he says, trying to pretend that he’s thinking seriously about sugar shacks or whatnot.

“I think—sometimes.”

Bitty snorts and he pulls the egg out, plops it in the empty bowl that Jack hands over. “Sometimes,” he agrees, ready to go quickly on the last egg.

“About going.”

“Well, you’re usually playing, uh, during that time.” His wrist is starting to strain from swirling the syrup.

“Baby wants to go.”

Bitty glances over—Jack has yolk in the corners of his mouth. Bitty wants to wipe it off, but this egg is serious business. “Yeah,” he says, “I’ll bet. What other things does the baby want, sweetheart? Does he want that million-dollar Leica lens? He want to take the train to Vancouver? No thank you, on my end.”

It’s a shame, Bitty thinks, that he’s not looking over at Jack when he hears Jack say, “I want to take the baby.”

And soon Bitty’s smiling into his pot of syrup, slightly shocked; he hasn’t heard Jack put the words “I want” and the word “baby” in the same sentence. God, he’d better not weep into his poached egg. This one—this is gonna be the best one, he thinks.

Of course, it rips in half when he tries to plate it.

Jack snarks, “More practice, Bittle,” but it’s not like he doesn’t eat the egg, asking, “You want to try it?” When Bitty shakes his head, Jack says, “Great, I wasn’t sharing.”

“Absolutely no worries, I can poach me a syrup egg any old time.” He almost puts the saucier in the sink.

“Bing that over here.” Jack looks into the pot. “Is it too hot to stick my fingers in?”

“Wait a tick.” Bitty pauses. “Don’t stick your damn fingers in the pot! I’ll get a spoon. … Should you be eating maple syrup with a spoon?”

Jack shrugs. “If I want to go back next season I’d better not eat any maple syrup.”

“I worry about gestational diabetes.” That neighbor with the wedding cake—Bitty’s heard she needed stitches. She was a big gal anyway, though—maybe it’s related. He just doesn’t want Jack to need stitches because their baby’s so big he doesn’t just slide out like in one of those terrifying birth videos Jack made him watch. Once Alicia whispered a horror story into Bitty’s ear: “Sixty-three hours and I still needed a damn C-section, and I thought, never, ever, ever again.” Then she took a sip of her vodka tonic, swished it for a moment, and added, “The things you let them talk you into.” Maybe she thought Bitty would be the pregnant one. She didn’t clarify whether she meant the C-section or just having a baby, or what. Her IMDB page is sparsely annotated after 1990.

“Eh, I’m not.” Clearly—Jack is wiping the syrup and yolk out of the bowl and licking it off his fingers.

He cried when he found out, shaking-crying, count-to-one hundred, then two hundred, Bitty sitting on Jack’s lap and pressing Jack’s cheek to his breast. Improbable spotting in his compression shorts. They weren’t trying. “I can’t get rid of something you gave me,” Jack confessed, like he hadn’t just within the past few months tossed or donated several things Bitty had gotten him: a jokey golf cap, for one; a Tupperware of boiled peanuts, for another.

“That was good Tupperware!” Bitty had protested, but he absolutely hadn’t intended for Jack to actually eat any boiled peanuts, or wear that awful cap. He hadn’t expected Jack to wake him up at 2 in the morning, either, but if Bitty could anticipate anything from Jack, it was that surely Jack would find a way to defy expectation.

Bitty puts the syrup back in the fridge, taking a moment to admire his deviled eggs. The yolk is whipped with pimento cheese, each studded with a bacon lardon and a flat parsley leaf. They won’t be to everyone’s liking; Jack, for example, doesn’t like pimento cheese. But Bitty’s proud of them anyway, pleased with how effortless he makes it look, and honestly dumbfounded that he managed to poach three eggs—okay, _imperfectly_ , but still—in maple syrup, for heaven’s sake.

He brings a spoon to the counter for Jack. “Don’t eat all of that, I mean it.”

“I would never,” Jack says, in a way that means he is absolutely going to. “I promise to wash out the pan.”

“Good boy.” Bitty puts his arms around Jack from behind, curls his hands around Jack’s middle, kisses his neck. “Come upstairs soon, okay? I’m going back to bed.”

At bedside, Bitty fishes his phone out of his bag and does two things: he Googles eggs poached in maple syrup, and to his surprise, finds Jack didn’t make them up. Sugar shacks do exist, and some of them offer sleigh rides. He has to remember to make fun of that tomorrow—

Then he turns off his alarm, turns off the light, and wakes up the next morning with tacky syrup handprints on his ass.

 

[4.18.2018](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/173073373991/baby-wants-eggs)


	7. well, if i don't like leeks, and you don't like leeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this for [@tomatowrites](http://tomatowrites.tumblr.com/), to float a hypothetical about future Bittle-Zimmermann offspring. I obviously [followed up on this topic later](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12840339/chapters/29318421).
> 
> Butternut squash and gruyere are perfectly great together.

At age 19 and going on 20, Imogen would like to study abroad in Mexico City. Her father won’t have it. “There are drug cartels there,” he hisses, like maybe she somehow doesn’t know. “It’s very corrupt! People are on the lookout for pretty blondes to abduct.”

“Is it really any less safe than here?” They live in New York City, which is convenient to her parents’ friends in Boston and her grandparents in Montreal.

“Yes,” her father insists. “Good lord, here is much safer.” 

“But have you looked it up _statistically_?” she asks. She knows full well that he has not and probably will not.

“Everyone knows it’s a very dangerous place. Everyone knows that. If you want to go somewhere where they speak Spanish, go to Madrid.”

“But I’m interested in Latin American literature, not Spain.”

The thing is, logic doesn’t get very far with him. “You’ll have plenty of time to go to Mexico later. We could go to one of those nice resorts—Cabo is perfectly safe. We can do it over spring break this year.”

“I don’t want to go to a nice resort,” she whines. She also doesn’t want to spend her spring break with her parents. “I want to study abroad in Mexico City.”

“Well, I’m not paying for that, and I forbid it. Forbid it!” As if the more times he says “forbid it” the more forbade it might become. “You’re forbidden to go. I’m not paying for it, and don’t even think you can just go to Papa and ask him for the money, because he’ll feel the same as I do, promise.”

Imogen doesn’t know if he _would_ feel that way, but she certainly understands that he’ll agree, because he agrees with Dad about _everything_ , regardless of his actual opinions on it. He is not, on the whole, full of opinions. He is very quiet and, on occasion, very strict. Imogen spent all of high school being woken up at 4 in the morning and made to run around the reservoir in Central Park. Every single morning, even weekends. It’s the only thing they ever really _did_ together, and she still wishes he hadn’t made her do it. Her friends are all a little scared of him. “Oh, he wouldn’t _hurt_ anyone,” Imogen would have to say, because he wouldn’t, but—the point stands, even now. Imogen can’t ask him to override her other father. He won’t do it, no matter how crazy and unreasonable the contention.

It’s winter break of her sophomore year, and if Imogen wants to apply to study abroad, she’s got to do it now. She could finish the application before they go to Georgia for Christmas next week. Georgia is miserable in late December—neither hot nor cold, muggy regardless, often rainy, and devoid of any meaningful thing to do. Her father and grandmother will spend most of the trip holed up in the kitchen rolling out, decorating, and boxing cookies. If Imogen doesn’t want to do that, she’ll have to spend most of the break in a pickup truck driving with Papa to various Civil War sites. She has been marched up and down Kennesaw Mountain more times than could be counted. Atlanta has no hockey team, which is a saving grace, since if they did she would surely be forced to go to a game and would suffer through it. She hates hockey. She hasn’t been to one game since she started college. Part of why she picked Oberlin was the distance from her parents—and, sure, it’s a great school—but the optimal selling point is that they do not have a hockey team.

“You know I am an adult, right?” she asks, hands around her mug. In this household they all drink coffee ceaselessly, regardless of season or time of day. “You can’t legally stop me from going.”

“Perhaps not.” Her father is refilling his coffee cup, a ritual that involves measuring out perfect proportions of sugar and half-and-half. “But I don’t have to pay for you to do it.” This seems to be the way things go around here. One of her dads made the money, and the other one decides how to spend it. It’s always struck her as a little bizarre.

“Look, do you want to call someone at the school? They’ll tell you how safe the program is.”

“Everyone thinks things are safe until they get dangerous.”

“Dad, that doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Oh, doesn’t it?” He puts the coffee spoon into the dishwasher and sits across from Imogen at the kitchen counter.

“Yes, because it applies to everything. Everything is whatever it is until it stops being that.”

Her dad laughs into his coffee cup. “Cute.”

“No, it’s not cute, it’s—stop babying me. I’m twenty years old, oh my god.” Or she will be, in February.

“That is _so young_ ,” he says. Imogen studies him; he has always read young to people, and the way he carries himself helps: lightly, swiftly, graceful gestures. He’s almost pixie-like. It’s annoying to Imogen because he is the source of all of her genetic frustrations: she is short, a sobering five feet even, with a little snub nose and large, large eyes. With her blond hair she looks unreal, like a kind of doll. It’s not the best look if you want to be taken seriously. Hadn’t he said something about blonde girls being abducted?

“Look,” she says. “You can’t fool me. I know what you were up to when you were twenty.”

“Well, maybe that’s how I know you’re too young.”

“I’m not too young!” she says. “You’re being unfair.”

The next bit comes out very condescendingly: “Life’s not fair, hon.”

“Ugh!” she gets up, pushing her coffee mug toward him. “Ugh ugh ugh!”

“I want you to have everything your heart desires,” he says. “But what’s that gonna help things if you end up being taken prisoner by some violent drug gang?”

“Nope, that’s crazy, nope. Dangerous things happen all the time everywhere!”

“So that’s why we try to minimize the risks we can see, right?”

“Nope.”

“You’ll thank me when you’re older.”

“Nope,” she repeats. “Nope, nope, nope.”

“Izzy,” he says. It’s a play on her first name and middle initial.

“Don’t ever call me that.” She’s been asking them not to call her that her entire life. That was the first sign that her life was going to be distressing. What kind of parents let their friends give an infant a hockey nickname?

“Apologies, Miss Bittle. It surprises me to have to remind you of the following after all these years, though I suppose you’ve forgotten all semester at that fancy college of yours. Rule one, I will not clean up after you in the kitchen. Rule two, don’t sass. Rule three, stay safe.”

“Excuse me, but didn’t you go to a fancy school? Also, usually when people say that they mean, like, having safe sex.”

Her father pauses. “That is not what I meant, no, but you can tell me if you’re having sex. Are you?”

She never has, but she is not going to do him the favor of informing him either way. “Sick,” she says. “Sick, you don’t ask your kids that.”

He shrugs. “You brought it up, hon.”

“No I didn’t. You did. Ugh! Just let me do what I want for once!” She dumps her coffee into the sink and shoves the mug into the dishwasher.

“You do an awful lot of what you want for someone who never gets to do what she wants.”

So, her father is probably not the smartest person in the room most days. Is it even worth spelling it out for him? “Leave me alone, Dad,” she says, leaving the kitchen.

They live in a palatial condo on Central Park West combined from two smaller units. Imogen knows she should be grateful for this, but mostly the sterility bores her. The building itself is ornate, turn-of-the-century; her bedroom, for example, has a marble fireplace and elaborate plaster ceiling work. Every room has cherry floors except for the kitchen and bathrooms, which are travertine. Honors and awards line the hallway. There aren’t quite so many as her grandparents have got in their honest-to-god estate, but Imogen remembers being six or seven and newly able to read them. By middle school she had read them enough times that they grew boring. Now she walks by them without turning. Sometimes, she doesn’t notice. They blend into the wall.

The master suite is at the end of the hall; her father’s study is adjacent. He has lived the same life practically every day since he retired: early-morning run, breakfast, and hours of “research” before lunch. To call it research is like a joke, because he hasn’t _done_ anything with it. He doesn’t write, or lecture, or participate in any activity that justifies having a personal study. Still, she knows he’ll be there, sitting at the desk and making careful notes on index cards about whatever he’s been reading, which, more of the same, probably: military history, maritime law, colonial Canada. Biographies of athletes, often but not always hockey players. There are only so many books about those. Once, when she was in eighth grade, she caught him reading _The New Joy of Gay Sex_. And not just reading it, but annotating it. _Highlighting it_. Imogen is not allowed to touch any of the books in the study, lest they become disordered and ruin her father’s very particular and also completely pointless ordering system. She has scanned the spines many times over the years, however, and never come across that one again. She’s not allowed in her parents’ bedroom, either. Maybe it’s in there.

This is probably suicide, she figures, entering the room with a light knock.

He does not look up when he asks, “What’s for lunch, Bits?”

Imogen says, “Quiche,” and flops into a chair in front of the desk.

Now he looks up. “Oh? What kind?”

“Dunno,” she says. “Beats me.”

He sticks a leather bookmark in the crease and shuts the volume he’s been reading. It is—yes, it’s something called _The Physics of Golf_. Horrible, Imogen thinks to herself. Horrible, good grief.

He asks, “Can I help you?”

“You could,” she says. “But, will you?”

Her entire life they have spoken French with each other, though Imogen feels bad about excluding other people when they’re around. Her other father gets some of it, but not everything. She’s been speaking French with her dad since she learned to talk, and he still won’t let her drop down to informal.

“That sounds ominous, but, try me.”

She doesn’t usually, because he’s so predictable. But, why not? She has plans to see a movie in the Village with some high school friends this afternoon, so worst case scenario this backfires, and she gets out of the house after lunch anyway.

“I’d really like to study abroad.”

He nods. “Okay.”

“If I want to go next fall, I should finish the application before we leave for Christmas.” When he doesn’t reply to _that_ , she continues: “I’d like to go to Mexico City. Because I’m doing Latin American studies, so it would be really helpful to get that exposure. Like, some immersion.”

“I never studied abroad. I wonder what it’s like.”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“I had a friend who did.”

“Who was that?” she asks.

“Oh, Lardo.”

Imogen cracks a smile, because Lardo is the only friend of her parents’ who bothers to use the name “Imogen.” It stands to reason that a grown woman who’s spent her adulthood being called “Lardo” would empathize.

“She went to Nairobi,” her father adds. “I guess she enjoyed it.”

“Do you think her parents were nervous about letting her go all the way to Africa for a whole semester?”

“Oh, um. That’s a good question. I think you’d have to ask her.”

“Do you think they would have kept her from doing it?”

“Well, she did do it, so it seems as though they did not. Why, do you want to study abroad in Kenya?”

“No,” she says. “I said Mexico City.”

“Oh, right.”

“Dad thinks it’s not safe.”

“Well, he would know.”

“Um, nope. How would he know?”

“Uh.” This is where Imogen can see her father struggling. Because, it’s true, how _would_ he know? And at the same time, how could he not? That’s how her father thinks about things.

“I told him and he said he wouldn’t pay for it. And … he also said _you_ wouldn’t pay for it.”

“If he said no…”

“Then what am I supposed to do?…Do _not_ say don’t study abroad there!”

Her father thinks about this for a moment; it’s obvious that he is trying to conjure almost any other answer. Finally, to Imogen’s dismay, he offers, “Bittle’s just looking out for you.”

“Wow,” she says. “Nope. Wow.”

“You think he isn’t?”

“Oh, I know he _is_ , or he thinks he is. But you know that’s not really an answer to my question.”

“What was your question?”

Sometimes Imogen wonders if he hasn’t been hit in the head too many times. According to certain sources, though, he was always like this.

“I asked, what am I supposed to do?”

“Oh. Well, that is complicated.”

It’s time to cut the crap, so Imogen finally just asks, “Can’t you just tell him he’s being stupid about it?”

“He’s not stupid.” Her father folds his hands on top of his desk.

“Okay, but, nothing bad is going to happen, and even if could, even if there’s some potential for it to happen, just, what, I’m supposed to live with my head in the sand forever, and not go anywhere? I can’t just not live my life for Dad’s sake. I have places I want to check out and things I want to do!”

“Like what sorts of things?”

“Uh, studying abroad in Mexico, for one!”

Her father smiles, or rather, his lips quirk so as to hint at one. “This is why it’s good I talked him out of making me be the, uh, sperm donor.”

“ _Oh my god_.”

“But, no, I mean it. I’ve never done anything unfamiliar in my life. I never wanted to. Bittle and I share that to some extent, though he’s more, ah, what’s the word? Not bravery—more outgoing, I guess. But we each like some quiet, some domesticity. I like a lot of domesticity. But you aren’t like that, are you?”

All Imogen gets out is, “Nope.” It’s a lot of words at one time from her father.

“His is cultural,” he continues. “You’ve been to Georgia, you see how it is. People live in that town for generations. Mine’s up here.” He taps his head with his middle and index fingers. “I’m glad you didn’t get that, is what I’m saying.”

“But that’s manageable,” she says.

“It’s also easy to mismanage. And some things in life are supposed to be scary and hard. But they had to be done. Coming out. Being traded to the Rangers. Having a baby.”

“Those are things from _your_ life.”

“Yes. Point being, I had no choice but to do those things. You’re choosing to do something scary for its own sake. That’s bravery. Of course you should do it.” Imogen opens her mouth to thank him for agreeing, but before she can say anything, he adds: “But you know I’m not going to contradict Bittle, if he already told you no.”

Imogen was probably 10 or 11 before she realized that most married parents did not address one another by their last names.

“So you won’t give me money to go to Mexico City?”

Her father may or may not have had a point about his own timidity. He gives her a sad smile, _what can you do?_ and returns to his stupid book about golf.

“Golf is the most boring thing on the planet when you’re actually playing it,” Imogen says, slightly louder than is necessary. “I can’t imagine how awful it must be to read about.” She’s spent enough time on golf courses to fully understand just _how_ boring it is: comprehensively, immensely. And her father is not the type of person to leave things unfinished; he will complete a course in the rain if he has to. It doesn’t even seem to dampen his enjoyment of it. Likewise, he doesn’t even flinch when she says that golf is boring.

She has been glaring at him silently. When he looks up at her, she suddenly feels embarrassed for having sat there with a hateful look on her face.

“Contentment breeds some paranoia, I think.” He looks back down at his book.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Imogen asks. “Do I _seem_ content right now?”

“But, no, I didn’t mean you.”

“Uh huh.”

Her father hums to himself, a brief _mmphhm_ , pressed between his lips. He turns the page and taps his pencil against the blotter.

Maye if Imogen just sits here pathetically, he’ll change his mind.

It’s getting near lunch; Imogen can tell because she only had coffee this morning, and as much as she wishes she had a cup of it right now, she is getting hungry. Also, her other father comes in, saying “knock knock” instead of rapping, and sighs when he sees Imogen sitting there. There happens to be a cup of coffee in his hand, and he puts it down on the desk, saying, “This is for you.”

“Thanks, Bits.”

“I have to check,” he says, “about lunch.” He puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder but he’s staring at Imogen the whole time. “I’m making a quiche and I was going to use leeks, but I don’t like the look of what I’ve got in the fridge. Plus I have gruyere, and leeks are more of a cheddar thing.”

“I’m ambivalent,” he says, in English.

“Do you mind if I use butternut squash? We have tons of it left over, from that soup.”

“That doesn’t really go with gruyere,” Imogen says.

They both ignore her. “If you’re okay with it that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“Squash is fine by me.”

“Great! I’ll toss that in and we’ll have quiche at a quarter to one. Plus a nice salad.”

“Nice.” Imogen makes air quotes.

What she gets in return is that, on his way out of the room, her father taps her nose and says, “Don’t sass! And don’t for a second think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“Oh, nothing, I’m sure,” and he walks out of the room.

As his footsteps recede back toward the kitchen, her other father looks up from his book. “Contentment breeds paranoia,” he repeats. “In smart people.” He reaches for the coffee.

“Paranoia breeds butternut squash in your quiche.”

“I guess,” he says, and he takes another sip of coffee. “I’m sure those leeks are fine.”

“I hate leeks.”

“I’m not fond of them myself.”

“Then why don’t you say something?”

He just shrugs.

“That’s a lot of help, thanks.” She begins to climb out of her chair.

“Wait,” he says.

Instead of leaving, she stands with her hands on her hips, waiting to hear what he has to say.

“You should ask Lardo.”

“For the money?” Imogen asks. It’s rather unbelievable; Lardo has three sons of her own, and asking her to float upwards of twenty grand when Imogen’s parents are pretty much rolling in it strikes Imogen as unpalatable.

“Not for the money,” her father says. “I’m not going to try to talk Bittle into it. If he asks me I’ll be honest but I won’t start a fight over it. Lardo doesn’t have that hang up. Maybe you should write her an e-mail. He respects what she thinks.”

“Okay,” Imogen agrees. “You know, that’s not a half-bad idea.”

“And if that doesn’t work,” he continues, “ask my mother.”

“To talk Dad into it?”

“For the money.”

“Wouldn’t that just piss him off?”

It takes her father a few beats to conjure up a reply: “Don’t put too much stock into what your parents think of you.” He taps the open pages of the book. “If you don’t mind…”

“Oh! Okay.” She is almost out of the room before she turns around and says, “Thanks, Papa.”

He holds up a hand, but doesn’t look toward her.

All in all, Imogen thinks, it’s not even lunchtime yet and the situation has already improved materially.

 

[9.8.2016](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/150138349586/i-wrote-this-for-tomatowrites-to-float-a)


	8. rumaki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [@tomato-greens](http://tomato-greens.tumblr.com/) told me to write a fic where Jack accidentally swallows a toothpick, and I do everything I’m told.
> 
> Rumaki will be the sleeper hit of your hors d'oeuvre arsenal.

Whenever Bitty got out the warming tray, Jack grew suspicious. He hadn’t wanted to sign up for the building’s progressive party, but, well, here they were. At first his objection was that, though he retained dual citizenship, he had always voted in Canadian (which was to say, Quebecois) elections, and so as far as he was concerned parties dealing with American partisanship were out of his wheelhouse, and he didn’t know why Bitty, an avowed let’s-not-talk-about-it from a family of let’s-not-talk-about-its going all the way back to the War of Northern Aggression (which they, bizarrely, loved to talk about), would want to get involved with such an event anyway. Jack’s head was in the closet while he was trying to find the cord for the warming tray when he heard Bitty say, muffled but comprehensible, “Bless your heart, no, not progressive like progressive politics. Progressive meaning you progress from unit to unit eating a different course at each apartment.” Jack nearly avoided hitting his head, found the cord, and told himself that he shouldn’t have allowed Bitty to sign up for this for a completely different reason: that sounded awful.

“Well,” he said, climbing out of the closet and into the yellow hallway light. Bitty was holding the warming tray in two arms like a baby, in what he called “clamdiggers” and Jack thought of as shorts. “What are we making?”

“An appetizer.” 

“Oh.” That was promising, at least, because if their apartment was the very first on the tour, maybe they could simply beg off, and politely decline to follow. “Big game tomorrow,” was one excuse Jack liked to use, but it was July. Some people didn’t know there wasn’t any hockey in July, but some people did, and Jack would never want to risk that. He was only halfway through his summer of marital obligation, and already he missed the obligation of his career. “Well, what appetizer are we making?”

“I assume you’re making nothing,” Bitty said. “But I have made rumaki.”

“Come again?”

“I don’t know if you’ll like it.” He led Jack to the covered pool table, onto which he deposited the warming tray. “It’s this mid-century thing. It’s got water chestnuts—”

“I’m not overly fond—”

“And bacon—”

“Well, I like bacon—”

“—and chicken liver.” Jack made a face, and Bitty laughed at him. “I mean, you combine the liver and the water chestnut, then you wrap it in the bacon.”

“Why didn’t you just make bacon-wrapped scallops?” which Bitty had made before, and which Jack rather enjoyed.

“Because Leila downstairs is making drinks, and she’s serving mai tais,” Bitty explained. He was now heading back into the kitchen, where the oven had been on all morning. This annoyed Jack to no end all summer, because it meant that, in order to keep their apartment at a strictly negotiated 72-degrees Fahrenheit they had to run the air conditioning at a tight clip, constant cycle, and Jack had just read a terrifying article about the polar ice caps melting and releasing millennia-old diseases into the atmosphere, for which science had no cure. When he’d voiced these concerns, Bitty had said, “I have more faith in human determination than to assume the scientific community won’t figure _something_ out.” Specious reassurance, Jack felt, and he wasn’t sure why the oven was on. If Bitty was baking, he’d have heard about it by now.

Because it was keeping the rumaki warm, Jack found out. Finally, Bitty pulled them out on two full-sheet baking trays, which he set on butcher block. “See, the mai tais are tiki drinks? It’s tropical? Like, luau-themed, you start at Leila’s”—Jack would rather not have to go to Leila’s, mai tais or no mai tais—“and get the mai tai, and then you come up here with it and eat the rumaki, see? Foolproof.”

“Foolproof,” Jack repeated. “What’s the dress code?”

But Bitty wasn’t listening. He was pulling a mason jar of something brown from the fridge. “You wanna try one?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

“Soy sauce with brown sugar. Can you be a doll and unscrew it for me? I’m gonna glaze it on the rumaki. Where’s my pastry brush?” He fumbled for it in the utensil drawer, and it became clear to Jack that he wasn’t getting out of this. “You gonna try one?” Bitty repeated, plunking the brush into the mason jar, and then swabbing the sauce onto a tester. “There you go,” Bitty said, nudging it, and Jack realized that he should have known better than to assume that the “gonna try one” question was anything other than rhetorical.

“I guess so,” Jack said, grasping it, warm and sticky. He gave it a squeeze—

“See,” Bitty was blathering, “you know Agnes Franklin, what from the church social committee Mama was on when I was younger? I told you about her—she used to bring rumaki to the holiday gift fair every year.”

–and put it in his mouth.

“Now,” Bitty continued, “I haven’t seen her since we moved back to Madison, you know, in twenny-ten, and I can’t say I miss her any more than you probably enjoy my stories about various people back South, but I always did admire the way she wrapped those little rumaki up, you know me, all sheltered like that, so I just thought it was pretty fancy, and I always wanted to try it, so when I heard Leila was making mai tais, it just kind of made sense?”

Jack nodded, because, well, it had been better than expected—the bacon was nice and crisp on the edge, which he liked, and the middle was a nice creamy texture with a crunch and a snap. He probably wouldn’t eat another at the progressive, but, it hadn’t been the worst thing he’d had forced on him. Once in Chicago—after a particularly humiliating defeat, no less—Bitty had met him to engage in some postgame culinary tourism, and taken him to some kind of hipster fusion place, and made him eat fried rice with crab brains.

“Here,” Bitty says, thrusting a hand toward Jack’s gut. “Give me the toothpick, I’ll throw it out.”

“What toothpick?”

“Ha ha,” Bitty said, glazing the ruamki with one hand, the other stuck out for Jack’s toothpick. “Just spit it in my palm, don’t worry about it.”

“There was a toothpick in there?”

“Wait.” Bitty stopped glazing, putting the brush back in the jar. “Let’s be real for a sec. Are you being serious?”

Jack was quiet for a moment, thinking. He wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but he felt fine, though he should probably brace for an onslaught of chirping from Bitty, and if Jack didn’t play his cards right here, maybe a lot of chirping from an entire group texting thread, should Bitty choose to share his stupidity. “I am being serious,” Jack said, slowly. “Did I just swallow a toothpick?”

“Seems that way,” Bitty said, his eyes wide.

“Oh. I didn’t know there was a toothpick in there.”

“Jack, sweetheart, my beloved, my darling.” Bitty grabbed his hands; Bitty’s were tacky with sugar-soy. “Bless your heart. How did you think it was held together?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I didn’t think about it.” He shrugged. “It was better than I thought it would be, though.”

“Glad you liked it.” Bitty dropped Jack’s hands. “Well, get your shoes on, honey.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to the ER.” Bitty pulled the pastry brush from the jar, and tossed it into the sink.

“Why? It’s just a toothpick, Bittle, it’s fine, I don’t even feel it.”

Bitty poked a finger to Jack’s sternum, and ran it down the front of his shirt. “You wanna find out if you can feel it when it perforates your small intestine?”

Slowly, Jack shook his head. Weakly, he said, “I’ll go get my shoes on.”

“I’ll call Leila,” Bitty said, screwing the top back on the mason jar—a lot of strength in that grip, if Jack could tell. “Maybe she can serve rumakis _with_ her mai tais.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

Bitty shrugged. “Chicken livers are slimy,” he said. “Someone’s gotta benefit from all of this.”

 

[7.16.2017](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/163063387486/jack-eats-a-toothpick)


	9. smoked meat ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three vignettes set in a nebulous potential future where Jack transitions after retirement, mostly written for Tomato. I originally posted these out of order but have set that right below.
> 
> I have written a lot more of this stuff, including a 20k fic that's finished but not posted. If I don't get chased out of fandom maybe that'll see the light of day.
> 
> I often write fics purely because I see fandom-specific tropes and decide it would be interesting to deconstruct or subvert those. In this case, I've seen a lot of fics in OMGCP fandom that presume one or another character is a trans guy, and the canon is reiterated through that lens. In response to that, I thought it would be interesting to reframe a character transitioning post-canon, like, way in the future.
> 
> Further, I have a bad habit of working my feelings out in fic.

For Bitty, the sinking feeling begins the moment he sees the press release: the Bruins will be hosting the Falconers in next season’s Winter Classic, and so there will be an alumni game. There’s no question about who’s going to want to play in it.

“I’m an alum.” Jack is nothing if not predictable—or dependable, if Bitty’s being charitable. “Or, an alumna. I’m an alum.”

“I know, sweetie.” Tonight they’re having enchiladas, and Bitty is working on the masa. “I remember, I was there. All fifteen years.” Those fifteen years sailed by, didn’t they? And yet, in this moment, the weight of all of them bear down on Bitty at once. He can see it clearly: this is what it’s going to feel like when Jack is told, firmly, no.

They don’t have a tortilla press, and this is a bit of an experiment: Jack is helping roll out the dough, corn flour everywhere, in her hair (which is still mussed; Bitty can make out the askew part he pried open with his hands) and on her tank. Her lips are still red, and everything gently moves along with her when she gets the pin spread over that masa. Her enthusiasm has always been, well, sort of infectious. That “blow me” wasn’t just a distraction.

“So what are you going to do?” Bitty sure hopes the griddle’s the right temperature. He could have looked this up, or just bought tortillas. They like the wheat flour ones at the Mexican bakery that comes to the market on Tuesdays.

She doesn’t miss a beat. “Call my dad.”

“He’s never done an alumni game, has he?”

“He called one.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Pens and Flyers.”

“I remember that,” Bitty admits, because he does, vaguely.

“But it doesn’t really matter, Bits, does it? It’s just, a sounding board.”

Sometimes it feels like Jack has no loved ones, just sounding boards. Sometimes it feels like less of a marriage than a venue for mutual worry.

“Honey, what do you think your dad is going to tell you?”

Doesn’t miss a beat. “To go for it.”

“Then what happens?”

Doesn’t miss a beat. “I call my agent.”

“Okay, and then what?” Bitty drapes a round of masa on his griddle and he can hear it, that audible rip. Nothing much happens. So far so good.

“It sounds like you think I can’t play, Bittle.”

“Of course you can play.” They’ve known that from the very first time Jack came out. Mercifully, he doesn’t have to look at her, because he’s looking at a tortilla. “I’m sure you can. I know you can. The issue is, may you?”

“May I?” Jack asks. “I’m in good shape.”

That’s certainly true. She’s still six-one, still puts Bitty over her shoulder just to freak him out. It seems impossible that, all suited up, you could tell that Jack was any different than anyone else on the ice. He’s seen women’s hockey—it’s not like they play in bikinis. Sometimes you can make out the minimal hint of a breast, but not really. Like an idiot, he grabs for the puffy tortilla with his fingers, hissing, “Ah, shoot.”

“Use the spatula,” Jack says, handing it over.

“I’m an idiot. I could have looked up how to do this.”

“I think it’s going okay.”

“I should buy a tortilla press.” The spatula slides right under the edge; it’s blacker on the underside than Bitty might like it, but, it’s fine, for a first attempt.

“You don’t like my rolling?”

“I love your rolling, sweetheart. Very good.”

“But you don’t think I can play in the alumni game?”

“Jack, for heaven’s sake, it’s not about that. I thought you didn’t want to play men’s hockey.”

They’re not looking at one another: the tortilla has expanded; it looks like it’s hovering over the griddle.

“I don’t want to play men’s hockey,” she says. “But, I’m a Falconer. We won two Stanley Cups, Bittle. That team, and me—I was their captain.”

“I know.”

“For many years.”

“Honey, I know.” Bitty pokes at the tortilla. “It’s probably done, right?”

Jack sighs. She crosses her arms over her breasts. “I guess. You want me to roll out another?”

“Let’s see how this one did first.” He uses the spatula this time. Maybe it makes Bitty a bad husband that he doesn’t fret over Jack’s physical well-being. He’s concerned about her, sure, a part of his mind is always fixed to hers, hoping she’s happy, and that she knows she’s loved. But outside of that, she can pretty much handle herself.

The entire tortilla has collapsed. “Let’s eat it,” Bitty says.

“What are you going to put in them?” Jack asks. “I mean, for dinner.”

“That soy chorizo in the back of the fridge. Why, what did you want? What were you hoping for? Beef? I can get some ground beef.”

“It’s fine.”

Well, Bitty sincerely doubts that, but he isn’t going to do anything about it if Jack doesn’t insist.

 

[11.15.2017](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/167508685416/okay-fuck-it-heres-more-of-this-jackbitty-850)

* * *

 

 

The Falcs come to Montreal and Bob invites Jack to sit behind the glass with him, front and center. It’s not a rare offer, though it is rare, having to choose; George personally dangled some of her allotment in front of Jack, but what is she going to do, decline her own father? “No problem,” says George. “We’ll get a sandwich or something.” Jack wonders if George is chirping about the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Jack would eat before games, but then suggests they meet at noon at Schwartz’s. Figures that the one time someone’s being literal, Jack would presume it wasn’t quite so easy.

It’s as easy as it seems after all, Jack reminds herself, and it helps until she has to get dressed and head out to the deli. She does not know what to wear, though that’s nothing new.

“Sweetheart,” Bitty tries to rationalize, “George knows you.”

“Right,” Jack agrees. “She knows me as a hockey player.”

“It’s just that she already has an opinion of you.”

“As a hockey player, Bittle.”

Bitty puts down the tablet where he’s been flipping through his cookbooks for a recipe for saag paneer. “What I mean is, whatever George’s opinion of you, it won’t be impacted by what you wear to get smoked meat.”

“But, what would you tell me to wear?”

Now Bitty just seemed tired; he sighs. “I don’t know, Jack. Well-fitting jeans. Maybe a nice sweater. Loafers. You know, the dainty ones I got you, the Ferragamos with the bow?” Jack has never worn those. “Makeup.”

“Okay,” Jack agrees, and she heads to the bedroom to try and make sense of these instructions.

“You want me to help you?” Bitty shouts after her, across the kitchen.

“I got it, Bits. Don’t get up.” 

Jack has a closet full of clothes, a long legacy: vestiges of lives past, experiments that didn’t quite work, bright ideas that never held, loving advice from her mother and her husband. Jack doesn’t feel right in a negligee, can’t stand tucking, doesn’t understand how some of these complicated things work—what’s the point of a blouse you have to belt? She stands in front of the mirror, hands on her hips, in the splotch-patterned yoga pants she’s got in every color, and a black T-shirt that goes with everything. It’s thin enough, this tee, that the outline of Jack’s bra is visible, and altogether her waist looks small and her arms look good, the hair on her hands having thinned to almost nothing except soft downy ones you can’t see unless you’re looking. What’s odd is that Jack looks in the mirror and she sees something kind of familiar.

It’s not clear why, but Jack doesn’t stop to think: she pulls on a sweatshirt—Falconers blue, obviously, though it doesn’t quite go with the yoga pants—grabs her purse and her car keys, and just goes.

~

George is wearing a pantsuit, as she would, and it causes an edge of panic to spike up on Jack for a moment before she rationalizes, well, George is in town for a game, it’s a game day, but I’m not playing; this is lunch, with a friend.

“Repping the team?” George asks, hands in her pockets. It’s a boxy suit, her hair longer than the cropped style she’d been wearing since the full-GM promotion, the same amount of makeup Jack is herself wearing: none. “That’s what I like to see,” she says, pulling Jack toward her by the hands.

“My team,” Jack corrects, fearing a rebuke.

George puts an arm over her shoulder. “You look good, kiddo. What was I thinking? I should have asked you to go on a run but since we’re just up here for the two games I didn’t bring my gear.”

“I’d have loved that. You’re gonna need it after these sandwiches, you know.”

“Well.” George grins. “You really do look good, Jack.”

George orders her smoked meat lean, but Jack goes for her standby, the full fat.

 

[11.14.2017](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/167505585866/because-of-this-i-have-to-post-this-sorry-kind)

* * *

 

 

“You ought to write a book,” Jack’s agent says, and not for the first time.

“I’m not—” Jack pauses, looking for a word, lettuce leaves balancing on her fork. “Prosaic?”

“Oh, honey, there are ghost writers for that.”

“But that seems.” Jack sets the fork down. “Inauthentic.”

“It’s your story,” she says, cutting into the croque madame. “What could be more authentic? Don’t you think people need to hear it?”

Jack doesn’t, but when she gets home she makes sure Bitty isn’t in the kitchen, and then sits down at the island with her tablet. Her father published a memoir once; Jack knows she must have read it, but it’s been so long, and she misses him. Strange, because she never thought she would. Most people, Jack thinks, expect the natural order of things. When Jack is at her best she’s an empty attic, nothing going on upstairs. As she throws the tablet down on the counter she thinks, well, that’s no good as a metaphor; I’d really like to go upstairs. I’d really like to be alone for a while with my thoughts. But then she sits, alone at the kitchen counter, and stares down at the blank screen. Better turn this on, she thinks. Better read this damn book. No, first I’ll make this cup of coffee—she gets up. Then I’ll read this damn book.

The older Jack gets the more coffee she drinks; Bitty is the opposite. He grows things out back, picks them, makes tisanes. Jack drinks coffee at 4 in the afternoon or 9 at night or 3 in the morning. “Isn’t that keeping you up?” Bitty asks, but it really has no effect anymore. Shadows of her long-ago pill-popping days: so much of something in the bloodstream that it takes a crazy dose just to be normal. Like the testosterone, she thinks, opening the book. Well, I weaned myself off of that. Ha ha.

No, she realizes, it’s the other way around; I never had to inject that. Well, whatever.

The fact is, it’s not that good a book. Athletes aren’t writers. Jack hasn’t picked up a hockey stick for many years now, since she deigned to inscribe the blade of one for the little hall of fame they installed at the new Falcs stadium. “You really think the people of Providence ought to pay for this?” Shitty asked. Jack shrugged, because she didn’t care. New owners made the right overtures, gave her a whole section in the back, crammed with her jerseys and skates. They look huge now, up close; what kind of person fit into those enormous things? Jack still hasn’t been to a game. For going on twelve years she’s been a useless Summit Park housewife. 

No, obviously that’s wrong; housewives do things. They clean or cook, at least. Jack is content to just be, to let the world swirl around her while she refuses to have a third slice of the tahini-pecan-honey cake on its pedestal next to the stove, drinking coffee and thumbing through some co-author’s summation of her father’s childhood visits to Val-Jalbert. Boring, boring. She flips to the end.

“The end”—so subjective. “My son Jack is 12 now,” the last chapter begins.

Jack doesn’t know why it’s hard to read this. She was his 12-year-old son. He would never put anything into writing that would embarrass that little boy or make him unhappy. “It must be a blessing to have a life so full of happy days. There is something uniquely wonderful, though, about seeing my son on the ice. The smile on his face when he was named captain of the Élite will stay with me forever.”

That’s the end of the book. There is nothing about Jack between the first line and the last. There is nothing about being a father. The chapter goes on about his life in retirement, his going to Provo to call the women’s Gold Medal game for the CBC, joking with Mario and Steve over how he didn’t mind being too old to play because the real money was in announcing. (False, Jack thinks; the real money is in endorsements, if not investments, and this is the first lunch in many years over which Yvonne hasn’t suggested she pitch for a women’s multivitamin.) Of course, there’s nothing in the book about how Bob promised Jack she could accompany him to Utah, or how Jack chose not to go because she didn’t want to miss three hockey games.

Now Jack has been to Utah, en route to Kent’s second wedding at a luxury chalet in Lake Tahoe—or, now that Jack is thinking on it, maybe that was on the California side. Either way, she didn’t want to go, but Bitty wanted to check out the chalet, and Jack had to wear something off-the-rack from a shop in town because she found herself unable to get the zipper up on her party dress for sedate occasions, a waistless Westwood that fell to the floor dramatically, cut just right to skim over all the unflattering bits without giving them away. Of course, it’s only flattering if it fits. Jack pinches her flesh to make sure she can still feel her hip. Yep, still there. She closes the book; there is an awful lot of cake left over. It’s staring at her from across the room. Bad day, Jack thinks. Take another Celexa, she thinks. Call your shrink, she thinks. No, she thinks, if you’re calling anyone, call your mother. But, she doesn’t really want to.

Jack is still staring back, caught between the black mirror of the tablet and the specter of the half-eaten cake, easily ensorcelled, desirous and hating it, knowing there’s something within her that wants to get out—but what, _but what_?—when Bitty comes home with the fruits of his labors, an armful of what looks like mostly vegetables, some citrus, and crisp shirts in plastic bags.

His hands go to Jack’s hips before he’s even got the shirts down, kissing Jack’s cheek and saying, “Guess propriety got the better of you”—because she shaved before she went to lunch, and layered on some foundation. He puts the shirts down and asks, “How’s Yvonne?”

Still stunned and still hungry, Jack all but manages to gather her thoughts: “Do you think I should write a book?”

The whole mood turns on dime: “Honestly, sweetheart, it doesn’t affect me either way.” Then he finally drapes the dry cleaning over a chair and starts piling grapefruits on a platter: maybe he’ll bake with them, or maybe they’ll just live with an attractive centerpiece of grapefruits.

Jack can barely get herself off the chair, saying, “Excuse me,” remembering to grab the tablet.

“Can you take that to the bedroom?” Bitty asks, meaning the shirts. To sweeten the deal he throws in another kiss; he pats Jack on the ass and says, “Go on.”

She does best when she’s following instructions, or carrying out orders.

But she really doesn’t want to write a book.

 

[10.1.2017](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/165939477746/for-tomatowrites-who-deserves-a-break-because)

 


	10. scraps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not the Aces player who thinks Parse is a genius, but a loose assemblage of unfinished yet shockingly comprehensible fic.

### Kent Parson is a vampire and

He never goes to optional skates. They are always during the daytime.

Kent shifts back and forth between gratitude toward his team for indulging his obvious idiosyncrasy, and figuring that they owe him—he brought the Aces a Cup, for fuck’s sake. And while, no, Kent’s not conceited enough to pretend that wasn’t a team effort, well, they didn’t have any championships before Kent rolled into town. That’s all he’s saying.

The rumors have started swirling, and Kent hopes they never test him. He’s not on performance-enhancing drugs, but his performance is definitely enhanced, and he’s terrified of what might come up in a blood test. When he joined the team he falsified his workup; wasn’t too hard. No one his size should be quite such a capable hockey player, they tell him. That’s nothing, he wants to say; you should see Zimms’ boyfriend. That little fucker can _skate_. But for Kent it’s the reflexes, the _reaction time_ that really works for him. He always loved hockey; he loved hockey before this happened to him. He’ll probably love hockey forever, he laughs to himself.

Well, forever is a long time.

That’s what he’s afraid of, actually: that it’s going to be long, and it’s going to be painful. 

He’s right at the start of this thing.

[7.9.2016](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/147154215381/kent-parson-is-a-vampire-and)

* * *

 

### AU: Jack and Bitty meet on Grindr

****

Bitty doesn’t think of himself as a slut, but, he’s got Grindr and he’s not afraid to use it. And he’s been using it, a lot. His profile says _Hey y’all!_ and that he’s looking for a dates, friends, or a relationship, and he is looking for those things. That said, he is basically using it to get ass. _A lot_ of ass. He’s not in any tribes, there’s nothing lewd on his profile, and his bio says:

_College grad, former figure skater, PR whiz. I bake the best apple pie you’ve ever had. Five-six and change is not that short, right? My mama would kill me if she caught me on this thing._

His picture is current: he’s in his tightest shorts and his favorite tank top, with the red-and-yellow color-blocking. Freshly shorn hair, big grin, looking off-camera to something the guy viewing his profile will never see. It was Shitty doing—something, lord, it was Memorial Day and they were all _wasted_. In Bitty’s Grindr profile picture, there is the ghost of a laugh on his face. He looks happy. He was happy. He is happy. People warned him about Grindr: it makes you paranoid; there are creeps; the guys who use it are shallow. And maybe some of them are just a touch shallow, bless their hearts. But Bitty is 23 and young and gay and he lives in Boston and he’s young and just—he’s having fun, and he’s so happy. Growing up, he never would have hoped—a whole boy just for him, if he wanted one, at any time of day or night. What bad could possibly come of it? He is having the best time of his life.

Boston’s not the cheapest town, even though his job pays well. He’s an assistant social media manager, but it’s his second fall out of college. So he has a roommate, Shitty, who lived down the hall from him in college. Shitty is a year out of Harvard law and a year past the bar exam, working at a nonprofit and “scarred for life,” as he puts it. He doesn’t talk about his job much. Instead, he sounds off on local restaurants, politics, sports; whatever’s in his brain, Bitty gets to hear about it. Their apartment, in Allston, is fine enough but nothing special. Bitty’s fixed it up, mostly with the help of his mother and Ikea: new curtains, rugs, Christmas lights, and scented candles. It’s homey now, “a good place to get baked,” if you ask Shitty. Bitty isn’t religious, but when he gets up in the mornings, he thanks a higher power he can’t identify that he gets to live in this apartment, with his best friend, in this beautiful city, every day of his life. He eats homemade granola for breakfast and a sandwich on homemade bread for the lunch he brings to work. He makes elaborate dinners and his friends come over to eat them, and if they’re not too raucous Bitty will take up their offers to help clean up. When Bitty brings guys home with him, he wants to open up the utility closet he was once trapped in overnight and tell his younger self, it’s okay! You made it! But Bitty knows he wouldn’t have believed it.

One Thursday night, Bitty goes out with his friends. He’s not looking to hook up; he enjoys their company for what it is: comfy, loud, obnoxious—but familiar. They have shared jokes that are funny every time: about Ransom’s propensity for dating loud, tall blondes; about the fact that Bitty can drink a bottle of champagne and recite the alphabet backward, but two Miller Lites do him in; about the fact that Lardo’s stuff isn’t selling because Shitty is her model. This devolves into a conversation about whose body would make the most profitable subject; who among them, of course, but who in this bar? She’s quietly dismissive: generic, generic, too hard to evoke that feel, generic. Bitty sighs into his beer as he listens to this, because it tells him that Lardo thinks of Shitty as both able to evoke some kind of feeling, and not generic. They’re going to get together, or back together; Bitty doesn’t know what happened between them before his freshman year. No one’s offering up that information, and Bitty wouldn’t ask. What’s sad to him, even as he’s the happiest he’s ever been in his life, is that he can feel the tug of this little group as it’s coming apart: not all at once, and not for a while, but the seeds of its destruction are here, in this room, in the baskets of ten-cent wings they’re plowing through and the game highlights they’re rewatching on the screens over the bar. The Bruins lost, and everyone’s a little sad about it. If Shitty and Lardo were to get together, would Bitty have to move out? He wonders as she laughs at him, wipes his lips with a wet nap, watches him push her hand away and say, “Stop, bro, it’s embarrassing.” Bitty couldn’t fuck anyone who called him bro. _That_ would be embarrassing. How’d he get through college with this weird group of awkward straight friends? He’s so blessed, he knows; unironically, he thinks that. Blessings aren’t everlasting, though. Bitty’s grateful for what he has, right now, on this night, in this bar, this year, in this city and in this great country where he can watch serialized drag queen pageants and professional ice hockey on TV in the same night. He has; he does. Shame about the Bruins, though.

They make him open up Grindr; it’s like a party trick now. He digs the wet nap out from under the bones in his basket, wiping his hands off. They started this game with Lardo reading her especially egregious OK Cupid messages; a lot of them were racist, and she’s not on the site anymore. A lot of them were funny, though, and Bitty appreciates fun like everyone else does. He’s the only one actively engaged in “dating” right now, though as Shitty’s well aware, his dates usually don’t last more than an hour or two. He’s been out with a few guys a second time, but, the dudes on this site are mostly idiots.

“Find us some crazy ones,” Holster tells him, leaning over the screen. It’s okay if he says it since he’s into guys, too. Though he’s never dated one, but, Bitty gets that. He’s never dated anyone, either. It’s hard being six-four, crushing on your best friend, kind of loopy from doing a couple of years in junior hockey before college. Holster is a Sabres fan and in unusually good spirits because they won tonight, down in Florida. Bitty swears he’s only dedicated himself to the Boston Bruins because the Thrashers left Atlanta when he was 15 years old. It’s hard to get over a blow like that, and what’s he supposed to do, root for Winnipeg? He’s never even been to Canada.

Some people on the site are really hilarious, in a tragic way for sure. That’s why he usually ignores the profiles and just swipes based on pictures. He hates it when guys don’t include a face shot, though; he’s ended up in bed with a few of those, and yeah, they’re usually pretty ugly. That or paranoid, closet cases. Holster takes his phone and starts reading profiles aloud, and Bitty would take his phone back but he’s drunk enough, and content enough, that he really doesn’t care.

“Don’t you get me any trolls,” Bitty says, though he’s trying to be funny. “You know I have a hard time breaking their little hearts.”

“Breaking their dicks, you mean,” says Shitty.

Lardo rolls her eyes. “You can’t break a dick, bro. They don’t have any bones in them. Not physically.”

All eyes go to Ransom, who was a bio major and is currently at Tufts getting a PhD in molecular microbiology. “Well, they don’t have any bones in them,” he says.

“Then why do they call it a boner?” Lardo asks.

“It’s like, metaphorical?” says Shitty.

Holster tugs on Bitty’s sleeve. “Bits, hey,” he says, shoving the phone back into Bitty’s hands like he fucked something up. “I kind of, um. Some guy’s messaging you?”

“Oh, lord.” Bitty takes the phone back. “Who the heck is this? It’d better be one of my projects.”

“Projects?” Lardo asks.

“I work on ‘em slow,” Bitty says. Now he’s blushing. “It’s like a little game, see. You hook ‘em with the profile and then you chat ‘em up, give ‘em a few body shots. That’s why I don’t have any on my profile—you gotta start slow.”

“Start slow,” Shitty repeats, rubbing his chin, like he’s weighing some lofty matter.

“Okay, let’s see,” Bitty says, opening up his messages. “What kinda trouble you got me in?”

“I don’t know,” says Holster. “I wash my hands of this.”

“Just join the site, bro,” Ransom says, looking at Holster. “Don’t make Bitty suffer for your curiosity.”

“He’s not suffering, Rans. You oughta see this guy. He’s got pecs like a fucking—milk cow.”

“Well, that sounds real appealing.” Bitty opens up the message thread first. Pecs aren’t his particular interest.

“You gonna milk him, Bits?” Lardo asks.

“If he’s not an idiot,” says Bitty. “If he’s not some closety headcase. You gotta keep this whole thing drama-free. That’s the trick.”

“I thought the trick was going slow?” Shitty asks. It’s like he really wants to know.

Bitty sighs. “Going slow is keeping it drama free.” He reads and rereads his message:

_In town tonight. You’re a skater?_

“So?” Holster asks. “What’d he say?”

“Not much,” says Bitty, looking up. “He’s in town for the night. That’s no fun. There’s no chase if it’s like that. It’s weird.”

“What’s weird about it?” Lardo asks.

“He’s probably going back to New York, to be with his family, or something. That’s usually what it means when they’re just in town for the night. Plus, how do you get to know someone if they’re leaving in the morning?”

“Maybe they’re leaving in the afternoon,” says Shitty.

“Wait,” says Holster, “this whole time, you’ve been _getting to know_ these guys?”

“Getting to know em, stringing em along for my own gratification,” says Bitty. “You know, whatever.” He bows his head over his phone and writes back:

_Just for the night?  
_

Instantly, he gets a reply:

_Here on business. You live here, eh?_

[The business Jack is in town on is serving the Bruins their aforementioned defeat. Also, unfortunately, he was going to be the closety headcase Bitty was trying to avoid. Won’t finish, sad, etc..]

 

[9.19.2016](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/150664184561/some-fic-idk)

* * *

 

### Bob Zimmermann's half-assed overparenting is a lot less fun than his half-assed underparenting

 

Maybe Bob is slow on the uptake, but these things are subtle. Jack is picking at his scalp virtually all of the time. On afternoon he wanders into Bob’s office to ask for a ride to the rink, and his fingertips are bloody.

So, Bob brings it up with Alicia: “Do you think he has dandruff?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe his scalp is just dry.”

“Okay, but, so dry he scratches it until he bleeds?”

Alicia has a cosmetic dermatologist, so she takes Jack to see that guy. Bob almost thinks nothing of it, problem solved, these things just work themselves out. That is, until Jack comes home after school and Alicia pulls Bob aside after slapping her gloves down on the counter.

“He doesn’t have dandruff,” she says. “His scalp probably isn’t dry.”

“Then why does he keep—touching it?”

“I don’t know, Bob.” She sighs. She’s been sighing a lot lately. “Why don’t you ask him?”

So Bob does, though he worries it’s a silly question, and he’s going to look awkward. He can charm anyone, but his own son is imperceptible. When Jack is sitting on the couch, watching a hockey game—Vancouver is playing the Oilers, a team Bob solidly respects for many reasons. Probably always will. Bob hasn’t watched them play for a while, though, not since the big game. There’s simply too much hockey. He sits down next to Jack and says, “Remember the Heritage Classic? That was fun.”

Jack doesn’t turn his attention away from the screen. “Good win for Montreal,” he says. Bob is used to Jack not looking him, or other people, in the eye. It pisses Alicia off. Bob doesn’t mind it so much. He just has laser-focus for hockey. Bob knows he’d be a hypocrite to judge.

“Mom took you to the dermatologist today, huh? How’d it go?”

Jack’s brow furrows. He’s had his hand in his hair this whole time. “Fine.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Canucks are winning.”

“That was awfully prescient, for a dermatologist,” Bob jokes.

Jack doesn’t laugh. “Naslund scored, then Keane. Two assists on the first but none on the second. I can’t score without an assist.”

“Assists are part of hockey,” says Bob.

“A good player can score without one. Coach says I could if I practice more.”

Bob likes Jack’s coach. He’s not a brownnoser. He doesn’t go too easy on the kids, doesn’t treat it like it’s ‘just’ hockey. The man appears to like Jack, which is a relief. Very few people seem to. It’s just a matter of finding the right place for him. Bob assumes hockey is that place. His son is a little awkward with people, even other kids, and especially adults. Okay, a lot awkward. Alicia’s concerned: “He can’t only talk to other kids about hockey. He could at least grow an interest in some other sports.” Jack likes to watch other sports, actually, or not so much watch them as follow the statistics. He’s a walking fount of NFL knowledge, which is relatively rare among Canadian children, or it was when Bob was a Canadian child. It reminds Bob of how, when Jack was very young and there’d be an open skate at the end of a practice, all the kids would pair up and skate together, chase one another across the ice.

And then there would be Jack, following his own little path at the far end of the rink.

“Cloutier is very good,” Jack says, when Cloutier makes a save. Bob knows Cloutier in passing. He seems like a decent guy, though it’s hard to tell when you spend ten or fifteen minutes talking over drinks at an awards banquet.

“His shutout in the first game last season was the first shutout in a first game for Vancouver ever,” Jack is saying. “His GAA last year was 2.42 which is very good. That’s above average.”

Bob tries to use a soft voice. “I want to talk to you when this period is over.”

Jack says nothing, which for him can sometimes signal an assent. They watch the game together, which is hardly a rare thing for them. They both love hockey, and they are both busy. Jack’s still so boyish at 13, with his braces and shaggy hair, his big eyes and his small hands. He’s a soft kid, which betrays his determination; he would play hockey until he fainted, until he absolutely broke. Sometimes Bob feels guilty about it, but it’s not all him, Alicia says.

“There are other kids like this,” she’s explained. “It’s not you, Bob. I mean, it’s you, obviously, but it’s also just Quebec.”

“Don’t blame it on Quebec.”

“I forgot that Quebec is perfect. Anyway, I don’t want to blame it on you.”

He should have asked her, why not?

Quebec isn’t perfect, but Bob doesn’t know much else. He would have gone abroad at 18, to Innsburck, to play Olympic ice hockey, but Canada wouldn’t send anyone. In 1980 he went to Lake Placid, which was beautiful and hilly and not overall very different from Quebec. That wasn’t a banner year for Canadian hockey. Finally, in 1984, he left North America and saw Sarajevo. Alicia’s been all over Europe and to Hawaii and the Bahamas several times for vacations with her family growing up. But what Bob doesn’t know about the world could fill a bottomless pit. He doesn’t know about places that aren’t like what he knows already. Alicia took him to Paris for their honeymoon, and led him around on the merits of her carefully wrought metropolitan France-French and expiring access as a second-tier model. He bought her shoes and dresses and she wore them out to dinner and afterward he stripped them off her body, handling the tulle and fine silk and delicate lace with utmost care. They felt clumsy in his big hands, like he could ruin them without so much as a little effort. It was exotic, but what they’d have done at home anyway, just—more precious suddenly. Bob looks at Jack now and thinks of this. He especially thinks of how easily bothered Jack is by the most banal things: his gear disordered, his attention begged, “adult” foods. He’s a little too old to order off the children’s menu, but does anyway. Bob can’t imagine bringing his son to another continent. They probably don’t have hockey in, say, Mustique. “We never go on vacation” has become one of Alicia’s constant refrains. He’s promised to buy her a chalet in St-Remy if she promises he doesn’t have to give any input on furnishing or rehabbing it.

Finally, intermission comes. “Jack,” Bob begins. “Please don’t be upset.”

That was probably a bad way to start, because now Jack is upset at the outset. Carefully, he takes Jack’s hand and pulls it away from his head. His little fingertips are brick red. He must have been doing this for a while. Bob mutes the TV, then thinks better of it and turns it off entirely.

“No,” Jack says. “I was watching.”

“I won’t make you miss the game.”

“I want to see what the announcers say.”

“I have to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk, I want to see the game.”

“I’ll put the game back on in ten minutes.” Bob hopes this only takes that long. “I promise.”

Jack huffs like it’s quite a bother, and doesn’t look at his father. But, he’s listening, Bob can tell.

“You mother said there was nothing wrong with your scalp, but you keep picking at it.”

“I guess.”

“Is it itchy?”

“I told the doctor no.”

“Then why do you keep touching it?” Jack looks at Bob like _Bob_ being weird here. “No, I’m really asking. It’s not healthy to make yourself bleed, Jack. Even a little.”

“I don’t know,” Jack says. “I just like it.”

“But you’re hurting yourself.”

Jack shrugs.

Later, when Bob tells Alicia about this conversation, _she_ shrugs. “He does all kinds of weird stuff,” she says. “It’s no odder than his other things.”

“Those are hockey superstitions,” Bob says, “and the issue isn’t whether those things are odd, or whether this is in line with that, but that Jack is hurting himself and he doesn’t seem to realize it.”

“It’s just a little tic, like how I pick at my cuticles. See?” She holds a thumb out for him. “See?”

He’s familiar. “Yes, I know. It’s just—”

“Stop trying to make him feel like a weirdo,” she says. “Every time you make a problem out of something he does, he feels worse about himself.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do!”

“I know it isn’t, Bob, but Jack’s not sensitive to the well you draw the concern from. He only hears the negativity.”

“Well, why isn’t he sensitive to that?”

“He’s thirteen,” she says.

“So that’s all? Let him injure himself because he’s thirteen?”

“Watchful waiting.”

They are watchfully waiting on a number of Jack’s quirks. He has no friends and doesn’t try to make any. Alicia feels he’s social enough with the other boys on his team. “It’s hard for him,” she says, the implication being that it’s hard for him because of Bob, because he’s worried other kids won’t like him on his own merits. The issue, though, is, which own merits? Jack is a wonderful boy, but he’s disinclined to interact with other children, so how would they even know what was so special about him? Jack doesn’t seem lonely, exactly, though it may be because he spends so much of his time absorbed in hockey. Not just playing it, but watching it, blabbing about it, compiling data about it: history, culture, and statistics. Bob has been living with hockey his whole life, too, and he still sees the value in other things. He plays golf, enjoys classical music, loves bird-watching. It’s such a plain and unobtrusive hobby. Alicia makes fun of him for it, but she gets excited about black-bellied plovers, too. He wants to collect fast cars, though it seems irresponsible to do that. “Why?” Alicia asks. “Some of those things are works of art.” He’s been eyeing a classic Bugatti for years. For now he’s content with a Beamer Alicia bought him for his forty-fifth birthday, and his ‘66 Chevy Camaro SS, the first big thing he bought when he inked an endorsement deal. It felt special at the time. He had to mark it.

That’s all on top of the responsibilities of being an ex-player. He sits on committees, talks to reporters, gives on-screen commentary, chairs galas, takes kids shopping who can’t afford equipment, promotes and sponsors Canada’s Paralympic team, and was always a sort of unofficial parent rep for Jack’s hockey teams until last year. Other parents would anoint him unanimously, though he never volunteered to do this. It’s true that he was good at talking with the coaches about specifics, and asking questions, though it mostly involved ordering post-game pizzas and bringing cocktails to away games. When Jack started bantam this year, Alicia took him. Someone else orders the pizzas now, though Bob still feels responsible for talking to other parents about what their kids are doing, on a technical level.

If Jack wants to keep playing, best-case scenario, one day he’ll have to stop playing. Then he’ll have to do these things. “He’ll love it,” Alicia says. “They’re all extensions of hockey.”

Bob knows there’s something special about Jack. “Special” meaning “unusual,” in a way that makes Jack endearing to his parents. Beloved. He isn’t the son Bob envisioned when he was younger, and he would imagine himself having kids. That was an early impression of what someone with a lot of establishment prominence should have ended up with: generic, too perfect, normative, and flavorless. Bob never put a toe out of line, but Jack came out weird. He doesn’t have friends. He doesn’t look people in the eye. He doesn’t watch kids’ shows or fuck around. He’s never been mean to a girl. He tells bad jokes that Bob laughs at because he gets Jack’s weird sense of humor, which is a little absurd, but also—not terribly dynamic. Jack is always very close to his hockey coaches. He tapes his stick in a very particular way that Bob has never seen anyone else use in his life. Jack isn’t like anyone else Bob has ever met in his life.

Jack is a lot better.

 

[9.27.2016](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/151022407551/some-incomplete-fic)

* * *

 

### What do you mean, Jack doesn't build model planes in canon?

 

There aren’t enough Diptyque candles in existence to get the smell of model airplane glue out of Bitty’s kitchen. He is trying, but good lord, that smell is just pervasive. It wafts through the house all winter, their windows shut against the cold. It snows all day, most days; at least, that appears to be the case this winter, Bitty’s first in Montreal. He’s been before, but it’s home now. That was the compromise: a house in Laval and a second on Jekyll Island. Two houses on the water, and now they both smell like model airplane glue. Well, it could be worse, Bitty figures. It could be drugs. It could be a disabling injury. It could be a younger man. All things considered, Bitty’s relieved it’s only model ships and model airplanes.

And yet: “Good lord, Jack, you can’t leave your pieces on the counter. I’m trying to bake.”

Little bits of plastic are lined up in neat rows on the butcher block counters Bitty’s specifically had installed in the kitchen. Some of the parts look like they could, in combination, come together to form an airplane; others just look like nothing, little sheets and bolts of plastic nothing. Here’s a propeller. Here’s a bit of…well, Bitty’s not sure what that is. There sure is a lot of plastic in his kitchen, and the smell is unforgivable. Bitty rests his hands on the counter and stares out the window at les Lac des Deux Montagnes. The lake is frozen near their property, but not solid enough to skate on. Jack wants to try ice fishing, and Bitty won’t let him. Their backyard is blanketed in snow. Bitty’s counters are blanketed in—well.

“This is going to be a Lockheed Ventura.” Oh god, Bitty thinks to himself. Oh, jeez, he’s got a book. “I’m trying to figure out if the RCAF was using the PV-1 or PV-2 when they flew anti-sub missions from Patricia Bay in forty-four.” When Bitty narrows his eyes, Jack adds: “Of course, that’s Victoria International now.”

“Of course.”

“Well, the pictures in here are pretty grainy,” Jack says, and he opens the book on the counter next to the model plane pieces.

“How many parts are there?”

“Um, one-hundred thirty-eight.”

“So, how long is this going to take?”

Jack shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “But, here, look at this.” He starts tapping a picture of an airplane, presumably the airplane he’s about to construct. Bitty looks at the header: _Canadian Defense Missions in the Pacific, 1943-1944_. “See, I know at some point the eighth squadron switched to some kind of de Havilland.” (Bitty still has to think it through: _Dey Aviland_. So, not the _Gone with the Wind_ actress. Some kind of airplane.) “There was some criticism that these things were difficult to fly. But it’s a beautiful plane, eh? This is one-forty-eighth.” When Bitty doesn’t respond, Jack adds, “Scale.”

“Weren’t you going to chop wood today?”

“I did this morning.”

“Did you want to bring it inside or something?”

“I brought some in already.”

“It’s not even lunch,” Bitty says.

Jack shrugs again. “You can see the markings are hard to make out,” he says, pointing to the picture. “Look at it.”

It looks like every other old-timey airplane Jack builds, to Bitty. “And this is, um.” He looks up again. “World War Two?” 

“Yes.”

Bitty rubs his eyes, exhausted. It’s only 10:30. He was up until four embossing place cards for the prom planning committee luncheon. It’s not the most important thing anyone Bitty knows is doing, but someone’s got to whip this organization into shape. With embossed place cards, he figures, and a Dobostorte. Last meeting all they served was Tostitos and an open jar of salsa, bless their hearts. They’re trying.

So Bitty tries another tactic. “I’m so pleased you’re enjoying building these little planes,” Bitty says. “I can’t wait to see it when it’s done.”

“I’m excited,” Jack confirms. “The Venturas are classic.”

“But, hon, I gotta bake something for the meeting—remember, I told you about the meeting? I told you I had to have the kitchen this morning.”

“I know,” Jack says. “I figured you could bake, and I could work on the Ventura.”

“That’s so sweet, Jack, I’d love your company. But you got your airplane parts all over my counter.”

“I know. I got the idea from your—mise en place?”

“That’s so nice to hear, it’s just—I gotta spread out a bit, and you know I like to work by the sink so I can clean as I go and look out the window, and it might not be a good idea anyway, because a lot of these parts are real little, and they might get—oh, can you imagine if they got all mixed up with my batter?”

“I know where everything is,” Jack says. “See, I arranged it.”

“But then there’s the glue,” Bitty continues. “I think you’re just used to the smell, but—the kitchen already smells like your model airplane glue. It’s pretty strong and I—I don’t want to overdo it with anything because I kept smelling airplane glue while I was working.”

“Model airplane glue,” Jack corrects.

“Yes, _thanks_ , model airplane glue. Oh, boy.” Bitty sits at the kitchen table. “I don’t want to make you leave or anything, but, I think we ought to talk about building you a studio or something. So you can work on your models without me getting in your way.”

“You’re not in my way, Bittle.”

“I’m so glad,” Bitty agrees, though he’s ready to tell Jack to leave the kitchen altogether, and take his little airplane parts with him. “It’s just—you’re in the way of my baking.”

Now Jack sits down, too, and he sighs. It’s so dramatic. “I just wanted to hang out.”

“I want to hang out with you, too! But that glue, Jack, it’s like—”

“I get it,” Jack says, getting up. “You don’t like my planes.”

“They’re very nice and I’m glad they bring you joy.”

“But you don’t like them.”

“No, I’m neutral toward them,” Bitty says, getting annoyed. “I just hate the smell of model airplane glue.”

“You hate it?”

“Jack,” Bitty says. “It’s offensive.”

Well, no, Bitty doesn’t _hate_ it. Why would he? He doesn’t hate the planes, or anything, it’s just—not his thing. They’re not his little planes. He tries to empathize, because he’s particular in his own way. He loves to replicate exact recipes after eating dishes in restaurants, just from guessing. And he likes to guess the makers of the glassware, flatware, and plates when they go out to eat—Duralex has gotten very popular lately, and Bitty can’t imagine why. It’s so utilitarian. Too efficient. Give him a homey mason jar to drink out of, or a big plastic tumbler, or ornate cut-crystal water goblet, subtly rococo, all that light catching in its facets. With glassware like that, every meal is a feast. He collects Herrend china, covets a solid everyday set of Wedgwood, and would redo this whole kitchen again and again if it would get rid of that awful glue smell.

Unfortunately, Jack is now sitting there with his big, sad eyes, looking at Bitty like he’s a total monster.

“Uh.” There’s got to be a way to reverse this. “You ever think about building something modern?”

“Modern planes, eh?” Jack asks. He sits up, rests his hands on the table. “From the last decade?”

“Well,” Bitty says. “From the jet age, I guess.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking—” Bitty wasn’t really thinking anything, see, he was just wondering if maybe Jack would build the kind of airplane he’s actually been on. Maybe one they’ve been on together. They took a really nice Emirates plane to Bali for their honeymoon, had a cozy private suite, and had slow, careful sex after dinner before dozing off. Or maybe it was just Bitty that dozed off; when he woke up Jack’s eyes were wide, and he was fiddling with an air nozzle. Or maybe not fiddling with it, but just, stroking the rim of it with his thumb, putting his finger in it, feeling it like the cheapest bit of this fancy airplane was erotic to him.

Dwelling on that memory, Bitty coughs out, “You know how during the jet age, stewardesses wore those cute little outfits–?” Jack doesn’t respond, so he continues: “And everything was so glamorous then, like flying was a treat still. All the china was so nice, and everyone got a cocktail. You could build one of those planes!”

Jack looks around like he’s trying to find an emergency exit. “I build planes with historical significance.”

“Um.” Well, there’s really very little to say to that. Bitty tries: “Those 1960s planes were very historically significant.” Bitty’s wracking his brain for a reason why, but all he can come up with is something about Don Draper, who is also beyond Jack’s scope of interest. “You know, it’s the era when air travel became really accessible to people. So it really set up, um—globalism, uh, into motion.”

“Huh.” Jack is thinking about it. He’s thinking about it.

“History’s not just the wars, you know.” It’s a constant refrain of Bitty’s. “Culture happened in between.”

“I know,” Jack says, though he needs to be reminded of this, all the time.

“Anyway, hon, it sounds like you’ve got a lot to think about.”

 

[10.1.2016](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/151175733021/more-fic-scraps)

* * *

 

### Prelude to Jack and Bitty fuck on a train

 

“They serve drinks on this thing?”

They’ve barely boarded. They’re not _settled_.

Jack is merely trying to hang up his coat. “I think so—”

“I’ll be back.”

And Bitty is gone.

~

There’s a kind of instability, hand-against-wall rocking, a balancing act in a narrow confine. Jack can race men six inches taller across an expanse of newly smooth ice on thin blades, but on his own two feet in a tossing café car, he’s hopeless. Jack grips the backs of the vinyl booths and prays he doesn’t faceplant into an Amish girl’s nachos. Hot cheese sauce in his hair—not the best way to kick off this honeymoon.

Of course, Bitty’s got a plastic tumbler of sparkling wine, and an audience. To the three middle-aged women he’s ensnared, Bitty is enthusing, “There was no privacy in that darn house. You couldn’t take a shower without someone barging in.” He definitely sees Jack standing there, thigh wedged against the seat as a makeshift brace, and a look on his face like, what the hell are you doing? “Honey,” Bitty says, waving him over. “I made friends.”

Bitty makes friends like Jack makes millions: naturally, though not without effort. “This is Arlene.” He gestures. “And Sandra, and Florence.”

They all have plastic cups of something, too, and they all kind of nod at Jack. They don’t know who he is. They’ve never heard of him. Well, they don’t know who he is on sight; maybe they’ve heard of him. It’s best not to assume, but middle-aged women aren’t hockey’s chief demographic. In any case, one of them, Sandra, whistles and says, “Boy, you weren’t kidding.”

Bitty says, “Right?” and beams like a crazy person. He seems intent on polishing off his little glass of champagne, or sparkling wine. “Honey,” he says to Jack. “Flo,” he says to Florence. “You want to scoot over? Have a seat, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

Jack can handle this, but he doesn’t have to. “I’m just going to get a—” He doesn’t really need anything, and he struggles to finally land on, “—a bottle of water,” even though he already has one in their sleeper.

As Jack waits in line to get a water, he listens: One of them asks, “What do you boys do?” and Bitty probably makes a funny gesture because the women laugh and so does Bitty.

“But no,” Bitty says, a little too loud for where he’s sitting. “I’ve just got some job, you know, it’s boring, I don’t care to talk about me.” This next bit is inevitable: “Jack plays hockey, though.”

“ _Ohhhh_ ,” says one of those women. It’s long and drawn-out. Jack thinks it might be Arlene. It hardly matters; he doesn’t know Arlene, and nor does he know Florence or Sandra.

Jack brushes past, clutching the bottle of water. It’s thin plastic. Bitty reaches out, trying to stop Jack as he goes.

“I’ll just be here if you need me,” Bitty says. His fingertips are light on the table with one hand, and loose at Jack’s sweater on the other.

“I’m just gonna go back and read.” There’s a brick of a book back sitting on the blue lounger in their sleeper, and Jack looks forward to it as the Silver Star rocks him first into one wall and then the other. He uses his foot to punch open the doors to the junctions between train cars, and when Jack passes through them he feels a brisk snap that’s not unlike the shock of stepping onto a rink without a coat or sweater. If Jack closes his eyes he can feel himself in some other era, some place in time when this train was necessary and not an indulgence, and when there really was no other way to get on with one’s trip.

Of course, there is a lot Jack wouldn’t pluck out of the rail era: he couldn’t be going on any honeymoon then, for one thing, and if he were then it would have been some attempt at damage control, or the second step in a multi-pronged effort to appear normal. It wouldn’t be happy, is what Jack tries to tell himself.

But he doesn’t feel happy now anyway, because Bittle isn’t paying attention to him and is instead flirting with three middle-aged women over cheap quasi-champagne. Last night they were drinking Cristal and playing footsie under the tablecloth while their mostly drunk friends traded stories about their romance. It wouldn’t have felt quite so loving in a ballroom or a banquet hall, but around their dinner table Jack didn’t doubt that they were all sincere when they said there was love buried in there, somewhere. There was no real audience, no big crowd of old Georgia hands and hockey executives to perform to. Just themselves, and each other, and Bitty and Jack.

Jack has never really been able to laugh at himself. But he’s learning, or he’s trying, or he’s trying to learn, or learning to try. He nearly trips over the floor when passing through the junction between two cars, but there’s a bar and he grabs it, steadies, and keeps going.

He hates this fucking train an awful lot.

~

Jack finishes the bottle of water he’s gotten from the café and half-emptied the second when Bitty returns. It’s a little unfair, this train: since Bitty is five-feet-seven (or so) and compact, balanced, and graceful, he steps into the sleeper without ducking. It’s the larger category, the full “bedroom,” not the “roomette,” which had bunks. Or, rather, there are bunks in the bedroom but the whole compartment fits more people. The main bed is meant to be used by two. Jack can’t imagine both of them fitting on there, and if they manage it’ll be tight. He’s determined to try, though.

“Still reading?” Bitty asks.

Jack is sitting on the couchette that will turn into a bed after dinner. The book is splayed open on his thighs, but he tucks his boarding pass into place and shuts it gently. He says nothing.

“I’m sorry.” Bitty takes a seat across from Jack, in the arm chair next to the bathroom. “I can tell you hate this.”

“I don’t mind flying,” Jack says. Out the window things are pretty.

“Yeah, but you fly all the time, so I just thought … well, I guess I thought it might be special.”

“It’s special all right. I don’t think they build trains for the normal-sized.”

“Let’s not debate over whether you’re normal-sized.”

“In some ways.” Jack rests his fingers on the book cover.

“Most ways,” Bitty insists.

“Sure, Bits.” Jack finds the boarding pass amidst the pages, runs the pad of his thumb over it. “As long as it makes you happy, I guess.”

“It’s so cute!” Bitty enthuses. “I mean, look at the little sink—there’s a little shower. There’s turndown service!”

“We could have flown anywhere in the world and stayed in a hotel that had that.”

“Oh, lord.” Bitty clasps his hands together. “Don’t you remember? When we were first dating I’d have to take the train to come and see you.”

“That wasn’t thirty hours to Miami.”

“No, but it felt special to me anyway. I guess I just wanted to remember that.”

If that’s a dig, it’s subtle.

So Jack says, “Thirty hours is a lot of remembering.”

“Well, maybe it ain’t enough for me.”

There’s a lot binding the two of them together; they’d never have become trapped (“It’s cozy,” Bitty says, fluffing an Amtrak-issued pillow) in this sleeper if there weren’t. Every year, there’s more: a routine, and then a mortgage, and now a piece of paper, a computer print-out that binds them legally: It’s sweet. It’s quaint. But then there’s the ever-present, shared tension between too much, and never enough. Most people have stress levels, Jack figures; he’s never been another person so he just assumes that much is true.  

Jack sees Bitty’s lips quirk up into one of his knowing little smiles. A blush bleeds across Bitty’s cheeks. Now Jack _knows_ he’s in trouble. Did they come on this train for _this_?

Can’t rule it out, exactly.

Bitty picks up the book that’s in Jack’s lap and he removes it to the couchette, then replaces it with his body. “Baby, I promised I’d take care of you.”

 

[3.26.2017](http://camilliar.tumblr.com/post/158876741411/i-am-really-trying-to-faithfully-post-all-of-my)

 


End file.
